Unconditional
by forever-lost-in-paradise
Summary: "Don't make me miss you too long." It's the last thing Rick Castle tells his beautiful, amazing partner before their world is upended. Before what he thought could never happen suddenly becomes a real possibility: a world without Kate Beckett. Dramatic and angsty for sure, but definitely a love story as well. Set during Season 5.
1. Chapter 1

Unconditional

Chapter One

_A/N: So I know I have an incomplete Castle story that I've kinda let slip for a LONG time, but honestly, I'm feeling uninspired for that one at the moment. I plan on eventually getting back to it, but there's no way I'm going to write more for it if I'm not satisfied with what I'm producing. So I'm starting a new multi-chapter...one with all the drama and Caskett that I love (and I hope you will at least give a chance). Warning: As Florence + The Machines sing in one of their songs, "It's always darkest before the dawn". Keep that in mind as you read. Takes place after The Lives of Others but BEFORE The Squab and The Quail (can I just pretend that Squab didn't even happen? No? Okay.)_

_Disclaimer: Well, I would have Beckett say yes...BEFORE Watershed ended._

"Can I just say how much of a relief it is to be rid of that hideous contraption on my leg?" Richard Castle commented as he opened the door to his loft. Perfect gentleman that he often was, he allowed his partner-turned-more-than-partner to enter before he did, closing the door behind the both of them.

"You can, but that's like the forty-seventh time you've mentioned it since you got the all-clear from the doctor," Kate Beckett responded, though there was no attempt on her part to conceal her smile. She too was relieved by his new-found freedom. After four weeks of near-constant whining from her partner (calling him boyfriend seemed so juvenile and demeaning), it was good to see him in better spirits. True, her "epic" birthday surprise for him had dulled his complaining...for a time. But after the high had worn off, he'd been right back to his surliness.

Not that she truly minded it. Beckett would never admit this, but she actually found his petulance to be mildly endearing. It made him more human, added another dimension to the man she was slowly getting to know more and more. And his 'invalid' status had given her more opportunities to show him how deeply her feelings for him truly went. He could see it in the breakfast she made him every morning, in the way she would affectionately scratch his leg when he didn't even mention it itched, in the kisses she would press against his head when he was feeling particularly down. At least, she hoped he could see it. And she also hoped that he knew that she was nearly ready to _say _it too.

"So, in honor of my liberation from the Cast of Hell, how about I whip you up something worthy of your kindness to me over these past few weeks?" Castle's question brought Beckett back from her thoughts. She stared blankly at him for a few seconds while her brain tried to figure out what he just said.

"Huh? Oh, no, Castle, you don't have to feel like you owe me anything." That, and she wasn't sure she truly trusted his cooking. Her mind flashed back to when he had prepared a smorelette for her right after Meredith left the loft. She shuddered inwardly.

"But what if I _want _to spoil you? You've been amazing and I just want you to know how much I appreciate that." He gave her a soft smile, his eyes twinkling in the way they only did for her.

"Or...it just may be that I got dinner reservations at the place you _thought _we were going to go to for your birthday. You probably shouldn't be up and about _too _much. Wouldn't want to end up on crutches again so soon after being rid of them." She smirked slightly as she finished talking.

"Don't jinx it!" Castle cried, eliciting the response Beckett had expected, much to her amusement. "All right, all right. You win this round. I'll make all this up to you a different time."

They arrived to the restaurant without fanfare, something that pleased the both of them. Although Castle was a regular fixture on Page Six, he didn't want this part of his personal life to be in the papers. But this was only because of the NYPD regulations against coworkers dating. If it were all up to him, he would stand on the tallest building he could find (which wasn't hard in New York) and shout, "Hey, everybody! My girlfriend, Detective Kate Beckett, is the most amazing girl in the whole world and I'm so lucky to have her!" And everything he would shout he meant. She was amazing. And he was lucky.

After placing their orders, the pair was left alone. Although the rest of the restaurant was fairly quiet and subdued, their table for two was animated with bubbling conversation.

"Admit it, Castle. You were jealous when we saw those male dancers during the Beau Randolph case." Beckett took a long sip of her iced tea and grinned deviously at her partner.

"I admit no such thing. True, those dancers had...um...impressive physiques. But you've seen me with even less clothing on and you have to agree that I'm not _that _far off from that sculpted look."

"It seems that someone feels the need to compensate," she smiled with a wink. "I think when you have to qualify yourself like that, it's kind of an admittance."

"We-Well, why are we talking about old cases? We're at dinner. And I don't see any other couples talking about murder." His excuse was weak and only further served to amuse Beckett.

"Oh, I don't know, Castle. Maybe it's because we _always _talk about murder, no matter what the setting. Take the time we both went on dates with those really eligible bachelors."

"Touche, detective, touché. Although, and I don't mean to presume _anything _from this, you did set up that date after I got in contact with Miss #3 on that list in the paper." To that, Beckett reached for her fork and pantomimed a throwing motion towards him.

"Not presume anything, my ass," she snorted. "There's no way I was jealous." However, she couldn't stop the spread of red across her face. Though she was an excellent bluffer in the interrogation box, she truly was a terrible liar, especially to Castle.

"Say what you want. But it all worked out in the end, didn't it?" Although his words were in a lighthearted tone, his eyes conveyed the true seriousness that he felt.

"Yeah," Beckett murmured. "Yeah, it did." Their eyes met and all conversation stopped. The next few moments were spent in silence, both of them too afraid to leave the depths of the other's eyes. There was something so _pure _about these times, the times in which they could just _be, _when they could just truly _see _each other without interruption, without judgment, without...

"Ah, here you are!" Their waitress, an angular woman with the tactfulness of a bulldozer, handed the pair their plates of steaming food. She left without asking if they wanted anything else.

"Nice, that one," Castle commented, his irritation stemming more from the fact that his moment with Beckett had been unfairly cut short. "I'll be sure to leave a large tip."

"Don't be rude," Beckett chided, though the sarcasm was plain in her voice. "Hey, I've got to use the bathroom. I'll be right back, okay?" She leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. She could feel his smile as their mouths connected. Neither one of them ever tired of these spontaneous displays of affection.

"If you must. Don't make me miss you for too long." She rolled her eyes, which did nothing to conceal her happiness at his simple words. With a little energy in her step, she flitted towards the restrooms.

Opening the door, she was startled to see a tall, broad-shouldered man standing by the sinks. Had she stepped into the wrong bathroom? No. There were only toilet stalls...

"Are you Detective Beckett?" the man asked, taking a step towards her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up at his voice.

"E-Excuse me?" she replied, fingers twitching.

"That's as good as a yes." And with that, the man closed the gap between them. Before Beckett had enough time to scream, to make a sound, to run back into the arms of the man that said he already missed her, he pulled out a syringe and jabbed it into her shoulder.

And the world slowly dissolved around her.

_A/N: Well, that escalated quickly. I hope that grabbed some interest. Reviews would be great! I will try to update at least a couple times a week._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

_A/N: Thanks for the lovely reviews, subscriptions, favorites...everything! I was so surprised at the response! As to the review questioning how the man knew when Kate would be in the bathroom...keep reading! I hope you guys continue to like this story. _

Castle sighed and checked his watch for the twelfth time in five minutes. Geez, Beckett was sure taking a long time to do her lady business. If she didn't hurry back, her food would surely get cold. Besides, he found himself inexorably missing her. It sounded ridiculous when he admitted it to himself. She'd only been gone ten minutes. But he did.

He grabbed his phone and typed out "Hey, u okay?" and sent it to Beckett. No response. But then, she wasn't the type to be playing Words With Friends while in the bathroom.

"Are you doing all right?" The brusque waitress was back and was peering curiously at him. "Can I get anything for you? Where is your lady friend?"

"Uh, no. No. I'm all right. And she's in the restroom." _Not that it's any of your business, _he growled inwardly.

"Huh, that's funny. Just came from there myself and the whole place was empty." She shrugged and walked away, muttering something about needing a new glasses prescription.

An odd sensation began to fill Castle's stomach. _There's no reason to panic, _he tried to assure himself. _That waitress probably went to a different bathroom. Or maybe they just didn't see each other. _That had to be it. It just had to. There were no alternatives.

So why did he still feel worried?

Five minutes later, Beckett still hadn't returned to their table. And now his initial concern had manifested into all-out panic. He had to do something. Thinking quickly, he jumped up from his seat and went up to a table with four middle-aged women sitting around it.

"Hey, listen. My girlfriend has been in the bathroom for a long time and she said she would be right back. Can one of you go back and see if she's okay?" He opened his photos and pulled up the most recent one of Beckett. She was at her desk at the precinct, smiling shyly at the camera, pen in hand. "Here she is. Her name's Kate."

"Sure," one of the women agreed, tossing him a flirtatious grin. Oh, right. There were random civilians that knew his name. Sometimes Castle found himself wishing that he wasn't so famous of an author.

"Thanks," he muttered, watching the woman stroll towards the back of the restaurant. Not wanting to stand awkwardly among the three remaining strangers, he retreated to his seat. His eyes fell upon Beckett's untouched plate. She had to be back there. She just had to. Yes. Why was he even bothering those women? Everything was fine. She would be back and probably chastise him for being so paranoid.

"There's no one back there." The woman was back. She gave him a worried glance. "You sure she didn't slip out with anyone when you weren't looking?" What kind of question was that? Anger temporarily replaced his concern.

"No!" he half-shouted. "No, Kate wouldn't do that. And you're mistaken. She's back there, okay? You must've missed her." He got up, brushing past the woman. Ignoring the startled gasps of the other patrons, he headed for the women's restroom.

"KATE!" Castle cried as he opened the door. "Kate, you in here?" No answer. The woman had been correct. There was no one here. He fumbled once more for his phone and hastily dialed her number from memory.

Her phone was off. Beckett never turned her phone off. His eyes shot upward and fixated on the back corner of the bathroom. There was a window (why, God, why was there a window in a restaurant bathroom?)...and it was open. Fear clutching every pore of his being, Castle made his way to that wall. His eyes scoured the window, searching for any sign of Beckett.

And there it was. On the windowsill. A hair. He didn't touch it, of course, but on first glance, it appeared to be hers. _Her hair. _Next to it was a single thread. It was the same color as the purple blouse she had worn to the restaurant.

"HELP!" Castle bellowed. "SOMEBODY, HELP!" A patter of feet could be heard and seconds later, the restaurant manager burst through the door.

"Good God, sir, what in heaven's name are you doing in here?" the portly man exclaimed, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. "I ought to have you thrown out!"

"No, no, you have to help me!" Castle pleaded. "My-My girlfriend is missing. She left through this window. I recognize the hair and thread on the windowsill-they're hers. Please, you have to help. She wouldn't run off. Someone took her!" He felt tears welling in his eyes. _This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be happening. _

"Are you sure she didn't just run off?" But Castle didn't have time for these kinds of questions. He barreled past the affronted manager, dashed through the door, past the customers (tossing a sizable bill towards his waitress for their untouched food) and outside. He made his way to the open window, praying all the way that this was just a mistake, that Beckett had acted uncharacteristically stupid and jumped out of the window, maybe as a cruel prank? Yes, this was all a sick joke. After all, she'd faked being stabbed just to surprise him for his birthday.

But unlike last time, there was no cake. No congregation of friends and family smiling at him as he approached the area. Nothing. There was no sign of Beckett. And then his eyes fell upon something in the bushes.

Her phone. It was her phone, turned off. Even if she were to run off (something he didn't even bother to truly consider, because there was no way, no way she would leave him like that), she wouldn't have done so without having a communication device. She just wouldn't. If she were trying to get away from him, she would've kept her phone to at least have a way to contact her dad or her friends from the precinct. He knew she would.

The pieces were starting to present themselves, but Castle couldn't bring himself to put them together.

"KATE!" he screamed, ignoring the tears that were finally beginning to fall. "KATE, WHERE ARE YOU?" He started running in the parking lot, eyes darting around, desperately searching for something, anything...Kate. After a few minutes, he realized he needed to boost the signal. He dialed Esposito first.

"Espo, someone took Beckett!" he exclaimed as soon as the detective answered his phone. "You have to get out here right now! Beckett's gone!" There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Castle, are you sure?" God, why were people even questioning his sincerity? Although he was jokey by nature, did people actually think he would make something like this up?

"Yes, 'Sito! I'm sure! I'm at The Breslin. Beckett went to go use the bathroom but she never came back and the window is open and there was hair and a thread from her shirt on the sill and...and...you have to get over here! Someone took her, okay?" A slight pause.

"I'll call Ryan. We're on our way. You stay put, all right? Unis will be more suspicious of you if you go off on your own, even if you're searching for her yourself."

"Right, right," Castle replied. "Right. Please, you have to hurry. I need her back." His voice cracked. "I...I need her." He tilted his head back, refusing to break down over the phone.

"I know." With that, Esposito hung up.

And Castle stood, shoulders hunched over, tearstains running along his face, alone in the parking lot.

He was still shouting Kate's name when uniforms arrived.

And there was still no answer.

_Hey, I'm on tumblr and it would be great to interact with all of you there. I post mostly Castle, although you'll also see Criminal Minds, Bones, Harry Potter, and various other things. I follow back! And don't be afraid to talk fandoms with me there-I love freaking out with fellow fans._


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

_A/N: So I realized after I published the last chapter that the URL to my tumblr that I tried to put in DIDN'T work. So it didn't even show up. My tumblr name is always-is-morethan-a-word. Sorry about that. Thanks for the continued support!_

"Wake up!" A sharp, commanding voice startled Beckett from her sleep. Her eyes flew open, darting wildly as they scoured her surroundings. She was in a dimly lit room, shackled to an upright chair. The metal binding on her wrist bit into her first few layers of skin. Upon further examination, she realized that her ankles were also cuffed, though to the chair's legs. Her eyes peered through the darkness until they located the source of the voice that had woken her.

"It's about time you got up!" The voice was definitely male. After a few seconds, a tall figure made his way into her view. At an early glance, Beckett determined that he was the same man who had taken her from the restaurant.

The restaurant. Castle. _Oh, God. He has to know I'm missing by now. _Surely he did...right? But then she realized she had no idea what time it was? Was it even the same night as it was when she'd been taken? Well, either way, her disappearance had certainly been longer than what was normal for a bathroom break. He was looking for her. She had to believe that.

_What if he thinks I left him? That I slipped out of the restaurant and ran away because I wasn't happy with him? _The thought entered her brain without warning. But it was ridiculous. They weren't the perfect couple, that was true, but he _had _to know that she was happy in their relationship. That she, although she had yet to say it aloud, loved him. She'd kissed him right before she headed to the bathroom, hadn't she? Yes, yes she had. She would just have to trust that Castle remembered also.

"Who are you?" Beckett finally found her own voice. She glared as menacingly as possible at her captor. The looming figure, however, sneered condescendingly.

"You can call me 'Master.'" He reached her side and gently ran his fingers along her cheek. She turned her head away from his hand, but the stroking continued.

"What an original title," she muttered under her breath with a scowl. 'Master' didn't seem affronted by her remark, however. He merely shook his head and laughed.

"When we're through here, I doubt you'll have the energy to be so sarcastic. If you even have the energy to breathe." His threats, though horribly clichéd, sent chills running through Beckett's veins.

"Why am I here?" she questioned, gritting her teeth.

"Oh, Kate, Kate," Master chuckled. "You'll learn soon enough." He leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead. It was such a sloppy one that saliva began to run down her face. She grimaced, powerless to wipe his filth away.

"Well, if you're planning on killing me, why not just tell me why I have to die?" Her bold words were not quite enough to mask the quiver in her tone. For, as she was speaking, her eyes fell upon the knife that was in her captor's other hand.

"Oh, do you really think that you're going to get off easily like that? A simple bullet to the brain and it's all over? I think not. You're not going to get a quick death, Detective." He spat her title out as though it were a bitter plant he'd accidently bit into. "No, it'll be nice and slow. Slow enough that you'll be begging for the mercy of a headshot." Master ran the knife along the bare skin on her neck, cutting ever so slightly. Kate could feel a couple of drops of blood bubbling to the surface. She clenched her lips together to keep from crying out. _Show him no fear._

"Did I ever arrest you or anything?" she asked, buying time, as he finished running the knife along that same patch of now-tender skin. "Are you holding a grudge?" Master barked out a laugh.

"Is that what you truly think this is about? Jail time? As if your prison cells would truly be haunting enough to make me want to waste so much energy capturing you." Even though it was dark, she could sense his eyes rolling.

"Well, whatever your reasoning, don't think for a moment that you'll get away with abducting an NYPD detective. The entire 12th Precinct will prosecute you to the _fullest _extent if something happens to me." She avoided bringing Castle's name into it. If her captor wanted to eliminate all threats to his plans, he would certainly go after Castle. And that simply could not happen. Kate would rather die a thousand deaths than allow this wretched man even to get near her partner.

"You think the NYPD scares me?" Master teased. "Those bumbling oafs are too incompetent to do any other job. Same with your pathetic boyfriend, Ricky Castle." For a moment, Beckett couldn't breathe. He knew about Castle, knew their relationship (which wasn't surprising considering he abducted her while she was on a dinner date with him).

"Don't you dare lay a hand on him!" she cried. "Kill me and leave him out of it!" She felt tears burning in her eyes at the thought of her partner, her lover, her world being attacked by this bastard.

"Do as I say and _maybe _I'll spare Pretty Boy," Master sneered.

"Fine," she choked out. She could endure anything, _anything, _as long as Castle was okay.

This time, the knife ran along her arm. And it cut much deeper. Pain hissed up and down the length of her limb, blood snaking from her shoulder to her fingertips. It took all of her will to keep from screaming in agony. Her arm burned as though a poker was resting on it. Every second felt like an hour as the knife continued to dig into her soft flesh. After a near eternity, he finally stopped the torture.

"You're pretty quiet," he commented, tone laced with mirth. "This not exciting for you?" He tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "Oh, well. The fun will start later." He laughed once more and walked away.

"HELP ME! SOMEONE! HELP ME!" Beckett screamed suddenly, panic seizing her entire being. Master didn't even turn around, didn't even flinch.

"We're miles from civilization. Don't believe me? Fine. Waste the rest of your strength yelling to no one. Like I give a damn." He disappeared from sight. When he was gone, Kate turned her attention to her wounded arm. The cuts were jagged, uneven, crudely made. Although her captor had the voice of experience, he certainly wasn't very handy with a knife. Or maybe it was all by design. The pain level was nearly overwhelming and the flow of blood hadn't ceased in the slightest. She definitely needed medical attention.

"Help me, Castle," she mouthed. "Please. Help."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"So, you're saying the last time you saw Detective Beckett was when she got up to use the bathroom?" The uniformed officer peered curiously at Castle with sympathetic eyes. It was early morning. They'd been scouring the restaurant for hours now, looking for something, anything.

"Yeah, yeah, that's...that's the last time I saw her," he mumbled, looking down at his hands as though they somehow would have the answers. "You guys don't suspect me or anything, do you? Because I _swear _to you I would never hurt her." His tone escalated to one of desperation by the time he finished speaking. They _couldn't _accuse him of such a crime...they just couldn't. Not only did he not have the time to waste clearing his name when he should be looking for Kate, but the _idea _that anyone could think he would harm the love of his life cut him to the core.

"Personally, there is no doubt in my mind that you're innocent, but I still have to get your statement," the officer replied. "We have officers interviewing the other customers and others simply knocking on doors. We're doing everything we can to find her. Just breathe, okay?" She smiled wanly at him, although her eyes betrayed her concern for the missing homicide detective.

_Missing. _Beckett was _missing. _It was still such a foreign, unthinkable concept. One moment she'd been sitting right by him, planting a kiss on his lips, the next...she was gone. In the blink of an eye, everything had been spun out of axis, everything was warped and distorted and what was once concrete was now abstract. Thoughts oozed and coagulated in his mind, nonlinear, senseless. Because there was no sense now. Now that she was gone and he had no idea where she was.

The officer asked him a few more questions pertaining to his discovery that Beckett was no longer at the restaurant, which he answered as though he were on autopilot. Castle couldn't even begin to fully engage himself. The minute he did that he would have to accept reality. The reality that, try as he might to find Kate, it might already be too late.

"You all cleared?" Ryan and Esposito were suddenly at his side. The officer took her leave, flashing him a comforting look as she did so. Castle nodded, fearing that if he opened his mouth to speak, he might end up breaking down again.

"Lanie's running the hair for DNA, but...but we're all pretty sure it's Beckett's," Ryan choked out. "That piece of her shirt, too." He blinked several times, trying to keep the tears at bay.

"She doesn't have to. I know they're hers," Castle whispered. "Did anyone find anything else? Something of her captor's maybe?" He himself had turned over Beckett's phone to evidence, but it didn't seem as though the bastard had touched it. In fact, the CSI techs had given it back to him, telling him that he would soon be able to give it back to her himself.

"No dice. This guy was good. My guess is that he's done this before. My guess is that he did use some sort of sedative to keep Beckett quiet, but we didn't find any traces of anything. A taser would have made noise, though, and the lack of blood at least shows that he didn't use a gun...or a knife...or anything like that." Esposito's voice trailed off by the end. It was obvious that he was hit quite hard by this. Not that it was a surprise to anyone. He and Beckett had known each other for a long time and it was common knowledge that they were siblings in all but blood. And now that he hadn't been able to protect his sister from harm, it was clearly taking its toll.

"We can find her, guys. There's no indication that he really hurt her so we have to hold onto that." Ryan, normally the quieter of the three men, finally spoke up. His eyes, though red-rimmed and bloodshot, were still filled with conviction. "We will find her."

"Have they-have they officially reported her missing? And alerted the media?" Castle asked. The more people that were aware of her disappearance, the better.

"Well, technically, a person has to be missing 24 hours-" But Castle cut Ryan off.

"Yes, yes, I know, but it's pretty obvious she's gone! Why the hell can't they just call a spade a spade and report her missing? We need to find her now, before that son of a bitch has the chance to hurt her!" His voice had crescendoed to a near-bellow, but he could care less. Nothing mattered but finding her, alive and safe. Nothing.

"Castle, we know," Esposito stepped in. "We know. It's going to be on the news this morning. She's a cop, so we have the whole NYPD backing us." He reached out a comforting hand and placed it on Castle's shoulder. "But we could use your help."

"Anything!" he cried without hesitation. "Anything. I'll...I'll do _anything _you need." The other two nodded knowingly.

"We need you to ask for people to come forward with information. Don't mention suspects specifically. But if you talk about Beckett like she's a human instead of something less, like the suspect might think she is, he might be persuaded to turn himself in."

"Yeah, yeah. Anything. But if he's an experienced kidnapper, don't you think he's, well, beyond these tactics?" Castle didn't want anything to jeopardize Beckett's chances.

"Just because he might've done it before doesn't mean he's incapable of remorse. Especially if he's like a hitman and only doing it on someone else's orders. If we're compelling enough, it might make him question his decision to take her. The chances are more in her favor if we do this. So...are you in?"

In no time at all (or so it seemed-the concept of time had become blurred to him ever since Beckett disappeared), Castle found himself in front of the cameras. He clutched Kate's NYPD portrait, the one that had appeared in the newspaper when she'd been shot at Montgomery's funeral.

"Next, we have bestselling author Richard Castle here with an important message regarding the disappearance of NYPD Homicide Detective Katherine 'Kate' Beckett." Castle snapped out of it as he realized that the interviewer was now looking at him. His eyes flickered towards the words he was supposed to speak aloud.

"Last night, at around eight o'clock, Kate Beckett, my partner...in every sense of the world (_To hell with it if Gates hears this) _disappeared from The Breslin restaurant. She was wearing a purple button-up blouse and black dress pants. She also wore black heels and a man's watch. As you can see in this picture, she has brown hair and hazel eyes. She's 5'9''. Please come forward if you have any information about her location. Please...I'm offering a five hundred thousand dollar reward if your information is useful in finding her." He was supposed to stop after this, but couldn't bring himself to without offering one last plea.

"Please. Kate means everything to me. She brightens my world and...and I love her so much. I need her to come home. I need her to come back to me, healthy and safe. Kate, if you can hear me, we're trying everything we can to find you. Hold on, sweetheart. I love you." He felt the tears rolling down his cheeks but he didn't care that he was crying on live television. He didn't care about anything except finding Kate. His Kate.

Meanwhile, back in the dark room, Kate also had tears streaming down her face, though not because she was watching Castle's heartfelt plea for her safe return. Master was back, and apparently had decided that the deep cuts in her arm needed to be mirrored in the other. The pain was excruciating and it took every ounce of willpower not to pass out from the sheer agony.

"Have you figured out what this is about yet?" he taunted, twisting the knife ever so slightly in her shoulder. Even that simple motion caused waves of electrifying pain to shoot down the entirety of her limb.

"No," she whispered, all out of energy to come up with a more clever response. "But I will." It was an empty threat and they both knew it. The pain had long since dulled her mental processes.

"I doubt it, Detective. Much like I doubt that anyone is even trying to find you."

"Castle is," she spat out. "You're not going to convince me otherwise."

"Funny, though, that on the news this morning, they had a plea from the NYPD for your return, but when they cut to friends and family members, your precious boyfriend wasn't even included." He was lying. He had to be. She wasn't going to fall for this bullshit.

"I don't believe you," she murmured, blinking slowly, trying to conserve her energy in the midst of her intense pain. "Stop trying to make me believe he doesn't care about me. It's not going to work."

For now.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

_A/N: Hey, guys, I'm sorry I haven't been able to update in a few days. I had finals and my SAT (I would've maybe done better if I didn't let my mind wander to analyzing Castle but OH WELL). But school is about to be out (I'm going to be a senior...YAY) so hopefully that equals more updates. Thanks for reviewing! I know I've been awful and not replied to them and for that I'm sorry. I'll start responding personally to them now. All right, on with this!_

"So much for my interview," Castle scowled as he slammed the precinct phone down. "We haven't gotten one helpful tip yet!" He glared at Ryan and Esposito, who were both sitting next to him, as if daring them to disagree with him. "This latest crackpot said _he _took Kate and when I pressed him further it turned out that _Kate _was the name of his golden retriever that he apparently backed over with his car."

"Someone will know something, bro. We just have to give it more time." Esposito placed a reassuring hand on Castle's shoulder. "These things don't always happen instantaneously." It was, however, very discouraging that in the twelve hours since Castle had begged for his partner to be returned to him, nothing had panned out. The techs were still working on the security tapes from the restaurant and the results were due in soon. But _soon _wasn't fast enough.

"More time? Esposito, _she may not have more time. _Why the hell are we just sitting around this damn phone when we should be out there knocking on every door? The longer he has her, the more chance she has of getting hurt or...or..." He couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence.

"We start knocking on doors, there's more chance anyway. Someone could alert the bastard that has her. Or if he sees a bunch of squad cars showing up in his area, he could make a break for it...and Beckett would be expendable at that point." Although Esposito was clearly distraught at his friend's abduction, he still had to think like a cop.

"Not if I go looking for her. Who is going to pay attention to a civilian knocking on doors? Everyone, even him, will probably think I'm selling something."

"Castle, this guy didn't grab Beckett by accident. She's a cop and she was taken. You think that's a coincidence? This guy knows her life. And if he knows her life, he knows you. You don't think he'll recognize you?" Ryan tried to reason with his heartbroken friend. But Castle merely shook his head.

"I'll wear a disguise. I know a guy...he could make me look like a completely different person!" Already, though, both Esposito and Ryan were giving him disapproving looks.

"Still too dangerous," Esposito said. "You don't want to end up kidnapped too, do you?"

"If that meant I got to be with Kate again!" Castle retorted, shooting up from his chair. "I would do anything to see her again!" Determination radiated from every pore in his body.

"We know that, bro. But you have to be smart if you want to do that. Any stupid move could compromise her safety also, you know that, right?" Castle inhaled deeply and slowly sat back down. He rested his head in his hands.

"Yeah, I know. I know," he murmured after a few minutes. He lifted his head and the boys could see the tearstains that were eroding his cheeks. "I just feel so...helpless."

"Detectives?" All three men turned around at the sudden noise. LT was behind them, holding a DVD. "The footage from the restaurant, as requested." He put the disc in Ryan's computer. The grainy video soon appeared and it showed the entire scope of the restaurant. Castle quickly saw himself as well as Beckett. They were chatting animatedly. There was something sickening about watching unfold before him. _She had been so happy. They had been so happy. _Neither one of them could've known that they were about to be plunged into a nightmare.

The video eventually got to when Beckett got up to go to the bathroom. Castle's stomach lurched as she walked away from their table. If he could have, he would have reached into the screen and grabbed her before she could be taken. And then he noticed a man get up at the same time as she did. His face was hidden from view, as though he knew exactly where the cameras were. He had broad shoulders and overall seemed as though even taking down a well-trained homicide detective would be no problem.

Ryan paused the video. "That's our guy," he said, although it was a very obvious statement to make. "He's following her." Three pairs of eyes fell upon Castle.

"I should've noticed him," he breathed. "I should have noticed." He leaned over and threw up into the trashcan that was right beside the desk. Tears stung in his eyes as he came up for air. "Why didn't I notice?"

"Hey, listen. You couldn't have known. There was no reason for you to worry about her. Look, Castle. Look at where he was sitting. Clear across the restaurant. You wouldn't have noticed."

"Ryan, he had a clear vantage point to see her get up. It would have been possible for me to see him. _Why _didn't I see him?" His lip trembled again. "She's with _him,_ God knows where, scared and maybe hurt...and it's all my fault. You're never going to convince me otherwise." He shook his head, feeling the burden of guilt wrap itself around his entire being.

"Feeling sorry for yourself is not going to bring her back," Esposito murmured. "You want to know something? I'm a bit disappointed in you. You've never given in like this before. You've never allowed remorse to get in your way. And I think that is what helps keep Kate fighting, too. Because she knows you don't give up."

"I'm not giving up on her, Esposito. I just don't know what else to do if I can't go out and search for her personally." He shook his head and scrunched his eyes shut.

"We figure out who the guy in the video is," Esposito replied. "That's what we do. This isn't any different from the other cases you've cracked open, except this time we're doing it for someone that's _still alive. _Nothing else has changed. We still have a crime. And we still have a criminal. There's a story here, Castle, and you as a writer should know that better than anyone."

Silence hung over them for several moments.

"Let's do it," Castle finally whispered. "Let's bring her home."

Back in the darkened room, Master also had resolved not to give up...hurting Kate. Beckett could hear him filling a large tub with water. It didn't take one of Castle's theories to figure out what was going to happen. She groaned as he soon appeared next to her.

"You ready, Katie?" Master asked. She bit her tongue at his use of the nickname that only her father used. He ran a rough, weathered hand against her cheek. She snapped her teeth at it as it passed close to her mouth.

"Still a feisty little bitch," he commented with disdain. "Those long scars on your arms aren't enough reminder, apparently, that it doesn't help you to fight me." Utilizing his immense strength, he carried the chair, Beckett and all, to the sloshing tub.

"You don't have to do this," she muttered. "Whatever you think you're going to achieve from hurting me, it's not going to be enough to compensate for the jail time you'll have to do when the NYPD gives you hell." Master was unperturbed by her threats. He unshackled her and, before she could get up and simply run like hell, threw her into the tub.

Pain. Blinding pain. Not only was the water ice cold, but it also served to aggravate her now-oozing wounds on her arms. His hand held her head underwater with an iron grip. She kicked and clawed as hard as she could, trying desperately to find oxygen again, but he was far too strong. After what seemed like an eternity, his hand lifted and she rose to the surface. She coughed and spluttered, trying to inhale as much air as possible. Her lungs burned with the anoxia.

"Time for Round Two," Master grinned, shoving her back under. He held her there longer, seemingly enjoying her struggle. Again and again he dunked her, extending the length of underwater time with every merciless shove. By the time he was finished, Beckett was only semi-conscious, dizzy from the lack of air and from the pain. Master unceremoniously flopped her limp body onto the chair and re-shackled her.

"It's too bad that Ricky hasn't saved you yet," he whispered into her ear. "If he had, you wouldn't be suffering like this. Do you really think he's still trying?"

"Yes," Kate breathed, feeling consciousness leaving her. "I know he is."

And then she fainted.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Once he was sure Kate Beckett was unconscious, Master quietly slipped from the room. In actuality, the room was simply the entirety of an old abandoned warehouse (Master was not one to abandon the clichés). It was an isolated building, far from ears of people that could hear the screams and come to the aid of his prisoner. He couldn't afford another jail sentence, especially not for this job.

Master turned down another street, eyes scanning his surroundings. _I hope I'm not late, _he found himself thinking, despite his normally blasé attitude about deadlines. But this was different. This job was different.

He really shouldn't have signed up for it. He knew that now. There really was no way he could ever be compensated for his efforts should he fail. Not that he truly feared that the plans wouldn't come to fruition, but he had to entertain all possible outcomes. It was a job requirement that he'd picked up over time. That, and the fact that he shouldn't accept jobs from certain _employers._ It was bad business to get involved with a certain breed of people. _Well, shit. _He'd really blown it on both levels.

"Hurry up," a voice whispered from the right of him. Master sharply twisted his head that way, realizing that his employer had not, in fact, forgotten their meeting. _As if that could really be in question. _This man was far more intelligent than all the other employers he'd ever had. He slipped into the alley, coming face to face with his 'boss'.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, though both of them knew that the apology was complete bullshit. "It took her a bit to pass out. She's a feisty one, just like you warned me."

"I would never lie to you," his employer replied sleekly. "Have you worn her down at all?"

"I believe so. Physically, certainly. She's lost a good deal of blood. Mentally, well, it's tough to say. She has the utmost faith in Richard Castle and insists he will find her." He lowered his eyes to the ground as he finished, hoping that his employer wouldn't be too angry.

"Well, they love each other, you blithering idiot, of course she's not going to give up that easily. You may have to escalate your efforts if you want more results." He glared knowingly at Master, the stare so intense that it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to become erect.

"I can do that. But-but what if they _do _find her? There's still a chance, even with protection, that they could find DNA. I'm not going to jail for this."

"If you're worried about them finding her, that's on you. Find a better hiding place if you must, Doran. And protection should take care of DNA. Frankly, I'm surprised you haven't gotten to that point with her yet. You seemed much more, ah, verile, when we first met."

"I've had her for barely a day," Doran countered. "You said to work up to everything. Wear her down."

"That I did," his employer relented with a nod. "Have you gathered the necessary footage?" Doran gulped and shuffled his feet. He'd gotten a bit when he'd shackled her for the first time, but other than that, he'd been too preoccupied to set up the tripod.

"A little. I was waiting until everything had escalated to begin filming more." His employer snarled slightly, but quickly reined his emotions in.

"I would have preferred more. It would've had a greater impact on our target. But what's done is done. I agree, these next phases will give him more grief." Doran felt waves of relief flow down his back.

"Do you want me to obtain the courier soon? I still know of a great person for the job."

"Soon," his employer agreed. "She'll be needed soon. But, Doran, I am a patient man. I have planned this for months, years even. I cannot be rushed."

"Understood." Doran turned to make his leave. But his employer reached out a hand and held him back.

"Collect the footage when you get back there. It is foolish for you to let her get some of her strength back."

"Understood," he repeated.

"Good. I will inform you of the location of our next rendezvous when the time is appropriate." With that, his employer turned on his heel and strode back into the shadows of the alley.

And Doran, the Master, went back to his prisoner, eagerly anticipating the task at hand.

_A/N: So there was a bit about what the hell is going on with this whole abduction thing. I tried to kind of hint at the nature of the torture Beckett will experience as kind of a warning of what's to come. If that kind of thing is upsetting/triggering, I'm giving you a heads-up. Rating change may occur (not planning on anything being super graphic)._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

_A/N: Okay, guys, the subject material in this chapter is going to be dark, I'm not going to lie. If you're someone that is triggered by sexual abuse, I would advise not reading. It's not overly graphic, but I don't want anyone getting upset from this. Guys, please let me know if I should change this to an M rating. I'm a teen myself and I feel like others my age could handle it, but if you think that it's too mature for a T rating please tell me. Again, this WILL be violent, but not over the top. As a sidenote, my heart goes out to those who are victims of this heinous crime. It's not your fault. _

Kate awoke to Master roughly slapping her cheeks. Her eyes opened blearily as she slowly registered pain flooding through her face. Hell, her whole body hurt. She could feel her lungs still burning from when she'd been held underwater, to say nothing of the excruciating bolts of pain that still traveled up and down her arms.

"What is it now?" she asked. "Haven't you had enough?" Her eyes bored into his as she tried to convey as much boldness as possible. She wasn't going to let him think anything he'd done had broken her. She was still Kate Beckett, top homicide detective in the NYPD. She was still Rick Castle's partner. And he was still coming for her.

"I haven't had enough of you, that's for sure," Master replied in a voice that was both threatening and seducing. She winced as he placed his lips over hers in what was apparently supposed to be a tantalizing kiss. God, his breath was repulsive. Kate tried to break the kiss, but her captor was far stronger. With deft hands, he began to undo her bindings, all without breaking contact with her mouth. Once she was free from her shackles, he wrestled her weakened body to the ground.

"Stop," she managed to whisper as Master began to remove her shirt. But her feeble protest went unheeded as the brute continued to strip her of her clothing. Never before had she felt so vulnerable, so emotionally naked. She felt tears streaming down her face, despite her willpower not to cry. _This couldn't be happening. _She lifted her legs to kick him away, but his large body quickly stifled her efforts. He had her completely pinned under him.

Slowly, Master began to nibble at the exposed skin on her neck, sending chills throughout her entire body. He started trailing kisses down her injured arms and then moved to her chest. When he reached her uncovered breasts, he paused, inhaling deeply. With one last hungry sigh, he took one of them into his mouth. Kate whimpered but was otherwise silent. She scrunched her eyes shut, willing her mind to take her somewhere else, anywhere else.

_"Dance with me," Castle whispered into her ear. She had been lazily lounging on the couch while he'd taken care of their dinner dishes. Her book had long since flopped to the ground and she had fallen half-asleep. Obviously, her boyfriend (partner, Kate, partner, he's so much more than a silly boyfriend) had other plans than simply letting her sleep._

_ "What? Castle, what are you talking about?" She sat up and gave him a bewildered expression. After a second, however, she realized she could hear music playing in the background. He'd lit several candles around the room, creating a very romantic ambience. _

_ "Fair lady, may I have this dance?" he asked with a subtle British accent, extending his hand to her. She smiled at his unbelievable corniness. _

Master had reached her navel and was slowly sliding his tongue around it.

"_You may have this dance, good Sir," she played along. Castle helped her to her feet and she gently took his hand. He led her to the middle of the room._

She could hear him removing his belt and unzipping his pants.

_Castle wrapped his arms around her and together they slowly moved to the song playing in the background:_

_ Maybe it's intuition  
But some things you just don't question  
Like in your eyes  
I see my future in an instant  
and there it goes  
I think I've found my best friend_

__Master entered her slowly, filling her completely. She could feel him _inside _her, becoming one with her.

_ I knew I loved you before I met you_  
_ I think I dreamed you into life_  
_ I knew I loved you before I met you_  
_ I have been waiting all my life_

_ She rested her head on Castle's shoulder as they continued to sway. He held her tightly, placing small kisses into her hair. Both of them simply enjoyed the moment, the time they had alone together, feeling safe in each other's arms. Neither one of them wanted the dance to end. Neither one of them wanted the music to stop._

Kate could feel his hips rocking against hers. His panting grated against her ears. Vibrant streaks of pain shot through her as he continued to violate her. She squished her eyelids even tighter together.

_"Castle, I hope this never stops," she whispered into his shirt. She could feel his smile even though she couldn't physically see it. _

_ "It won't, Kate. I promise. It's always going to be you and I, we're always going to be doing this dance, and the music's never going to stop. I promise you. No one's going to step in and sweep me away because the only person that I want to have in my arms is you. Didn't you hear the music? I've loved you forever."_

She sensed his climax, felt the shudders of agony that rippled through her body. Master lay on top of her for a moment more, collecting himself. She tried to push him off, but every iota of energy had been ripped from her body the moment he'd taken what she'd never offered. All she could do was remain absolutely still and try to disconnect even further.

_They danced for another hour, each song merely a profession of the love Castle had for her...and what she had for him, if she only had the courage to tell him so. When he sensed she was growing tired, he carried her to their bed. Neither one of them was up to making love, but then, they didn't really need to._

_ They'd already shown their love for each other in their never-ending dance. _

Kate watched as Master suddenly got up and went to the corner of the room. Her eyes fell upon a tripod. He'd recorded the whole thing. She felt like vomiting. _Castle. _

She lost consciousness again, her last thoughts of falling asleep that long ago night to his whispered "I love you."

_Later_

It had been three days since Kate had gone missing. No leads. None. Castle was in a state of near-hysteria. Despite the reassurances of the other detectives, he wouldn't feel better until he had Kate safely in his arms again.

_When will you come home, baby? _he thought as he stared at her picture on the murder board. He thought, after Alexis' disappearance, that no one else that he loved would have their photo on display like that. Her smiling face seemed so bitterly inappropriate for the situation. It taunted him, forcing him to remember her when she was happy, when she was safe, when she was with him, when everything made sense.

"Castle?" Karpowski was standing next to him, clutching a package. Her eyes were wide with fear. "This is for you." She handed him the wrapped object before quickly walking away. He opened the packaging, revealing a DVD.

"Ryan? Esposito? Get over here!" he cried, panic filling his entire being. "I think he's sent us something!" The boys ran over. Without another word exchanged, Castle put the DVD into the computer.

_To be continued..._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

_ A/N: I'm sorry that the last chapter caused upheaval. Although I did post warnings (and went back and changed the rating to M), I still feel bad. But to the reviewer (who disabled their PMs) who questioned why the rape/torture was necessary, I have this to say: This is my story. Everything is happening for a reason. I'm not a sadist that just writes torture scenes to practice for my future murders. The rape ties into the Master and his employer's (whose identity is still unknown...hehe) plan, which obviously involves Castle. While I realize these types of stories are dark and should be written with the ultimate respect for the seriousness of the themes in mind, there are readers who like the genre because it gives an opportunity to show how Caskett reacts. For me, at least, writing Castle's desperation to find Beckett and Beckett's faith in Castle's ability to find her is really the central storyline. This is, at the core, a love story. Yes, there is the sinister plot and everything, but the REAL story is between Castle and Beckett. I can promise that I will not write anymore sexual abuse...any more would be completely unnecessary. _

_ Not going to lie, I kinda wanted to delete this story after seeing some of the reviews. But I'm not going to. This is my story. I don't allow people's opinions of me to define me in real life and so I won't allow people's opinions of my story online to define me either. I'm not going to overreact just because a couple people didn't like it. I also won't hold this story hostage and say "I better get 20 people to tell me to keep writing this or else I'm deleting it because everyone hates it"-that would also be dumb. _

_ Sorry that this was long, but I had to say it. Now, on with this (if you guys are still interested)_

_ Without another word, Castle put the DVD into the computer._

The video itself seemed to be of poor quality, as though the captor had not taken the time to purchase a decent camera. For this, Castle would ultimately be thankful. He and Ryan and Esposito watched as the large man (with the same build as the one that was in the restaurant, the all noted) approached a figure who appeared to be bound to a chair.

"That's her," Castle whispered, his hand flying to his mouth. "That's Kate." Even though he wasn't surprised Kate was in the position she was, it still gutted him to see her so vulnerable, to see that independence she so desperately relied on stripped from her. He squinted at her, trying to determine if she was injured in any way.

"I think I see cut marks on her arms," Esposito growled, clenching his teeth. "That bastard." After a moment, Castle too saw the unmistakable lines running up and down her arms. He felt nauseated at simply the thought of his beautiful Kate going through something so painful, so unfair.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," he whispered and, not caring that he wasn't alone, kissed his finger and gently rested it over her image on the screen. "I'm so sorry." He allowed it to hover there, as though he was actually touching the real her. But when he saw that her abductor was kissing her, he dropped his hand immediately.

"NO!" he cried out, his heart racing. "NO! DON'T YOU TOUCH HER!" But the man in the video, of course, paid him no mind. Castle watched in absolute terror as her captor removed her from the chair and, without ceasing in the kiss, covered her body with his on the ground.

"Castle, maybe you shouldn't watch this," Ryan breathed, eyes wide open in fear. His face had gone pale. Esposito merely stood in stony silence, but no one could mistake the tears that were forming in his eyes. Nobody touched his sister like that and got away with it.

"No, no, I have to," Castle replied, his voice already unsteady. "If Kate had to go through this, the least I can do is watch over her." Still though, it took all of his willpower not to turn and run away. Far away, far from the video, from this nightmare, from the rest of the world. Run to Kate.

The tears were dripping freely down his face by the time the man was moving within her. He couldn't imagine her fear, her pain. Kate was mostly silent throughout the whole ordeal, her eyes closed. Occasionally, a whimper would burst past her lips, and with every sound she made, Castle's heart clenched a little tighter. He wished more than anything in the world that somehow, simply by reaching his hand into the screen, that he could pull the love of his life out of that terrible place and into his arms. He would kiss her wounds, removing every trace of the evil that had touched her, replacing it with all the compassion he had in him. He would hold her tight to his chest, run his hands through her hair, whisper his words of love into her ears. He would never let her go, never again. He would be there for her always. He would.

Finally, the bastard finished his abuse. Castle could see that Kate had been weakened significantly by the assault. She lay there, still and quiet. He could tell that she was in agony by the way her body shook slightly, but she appeared too weak to scream. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming for her, to keep from displaying the emotions that she was probably feeling.

"Ricky," a voice suddenly whispered in the video. "Ricky, are you mad yet?" The captor was hidden from the camera's view, yet was still audible.

"He could at least wear a freakin ski mask and stand in front of the camera," Esposito muttered. "That way we could have SOMETHING to identify him with. At least a more defined body outline if nothing else." But Castle was no longer listening.

"Let her go!" he exclaimed, forgetting that the events in the video had already happened. He wished there was a time stamp so he could know _how _long ago they'd happened.

"Castle, it's a DVD," Ryan murmured. "This isn't a live feed." But Castle brushed him off.

"Let me at him! Let me kill him! I'm going to murder that son of a bitch with my bare hands!" He was displaying a level of aggression that neither Ryan nor Esposito were familiar with. But things were different. The Castle that made jokes and was good-natured about everything had disappeared when Kate had.

"Are you mad now, now that you've seen someone you care about go through all that?" the voice continued to taunt. A guttural sound erupted from Castle's throat as he nearly lunged at the screen. It took the two detectives to restrain him.

"My employer was mad, too, when you destroyed something of his. When you destroyed his plans." At that, Castle's ears suddenly perked up. _Employer? _This was not a development he'd necessarily expected.

"Yes, my employer. Plot twist, Writer Boy. Now what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do except watch your precious little girlfriendwaste away? I feel that's all you can do. And so does my employer. He _wants _you to watch her suffer. He wants you to feel the pain he felt when his plans went awry. They were as important to him as your detectivewas to you." And then the screen went black as the video ended. And Castle felt rage seep through him.

"HE SAID 'WAS'. OH MY GOD. HE SAID WAS-" But Esposito cut him off.

"Castle, focus! He may have, but he's given us something very valuable here!" Castle nodded knowingly.

"Yeah. The fact that he's not acting of his own will. And that he pretty much told us who his employer. Tyson." He spat out the name, as though it were a poison.

"You were right. He did fake his death on that bridge. I thought he was gone. But, yeah, he's the guy whose plans you foiled. You were supposed to die when he framed you. But you got away, though Beckett never told us how."

"I never told her. I didn't want to implicate her just in case. But I don't think Tyson was personally affected by my escape method."

"You lived, Castle. He was affected by that. And he knew the best way to punish you was to hurt Beckett."

"Well, it's going to work. You heard what he said. 'They were important as your detective was to you.' _Was. _They're going to kill her and there's nothing I can do. Tyson knows the best hiding places to keep her, and he also has help. We're not going to find her before they finish her off. And, honestly, I don't think I can survive that." He was speaking as openly as he ever had in the precinct, something that was not lost on the boys. They both reached out and placed comforting hands on their friend.

"Don't give up. You saw the video. Beckett didn't give in and beg to this sick bastard. Now you can't either."

"Yeah, but she didn't say anything. She barely tried to get him off her."

"Castle, if you didn't notice, she was already kind of banged up. And that guy has got more than a hundred pounds on her. Despite the fact Beckett is a badass in the field, the truth is, he's a hell of a lot stronger than her. Think about it: Tyson's not going to pick anyone that won't get the job done. I don't think she gave up. In fact, I think her being quiet was just part of her resolution not to."

"_Won't get the job done? _Espo, do you think that's helping me at all?" Castle asked in a low voice.

"I didn't mean I thought he would kill her. This isn't over yet. We have the identity of the employer. That's a huge help. Now we've got to use that knowledge to find Beckett. All right?"

"All right." And then he pushed replay on the video.

"Why do you want to watch this again? Haven't you seen enough?" Ryan questioned gently.

"No, and that's why I'm watching. There's details in that room," Castle stated. "I know there are. We have to find them."

"_Damn, Castle. You're thinking like a real cop," _the Kate Beckett from long ago whispered in his ear.

He hoped with everything in him that he could make her proud, that he could use all she had taught him to find her.

Alive.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

_A/N: So I just have to thank all of you who left such encouraging messages. I replied to all those who had signed in but I just wanted to repeat the fact that I am immensely grateful for your support. You guys are amazing!:)_

"So is this the part where you're finally going to kill me?" Beckett asked, eyes half-open. She'd just regained consciousness following Master's brutal assault of her body. She had heard him shuffling around the room and her question had burst from her lips before she could stop it.

"Do you want me to?" he replied softly. "Do you want me to kill you, Detective Beckett?" She could feel him approaching her and did not even bother to try and open her eyes any more. No reason to further imprint his face into her memory.

"Didn't say that," she responded evenly. "Just wondering if that was in the cards now." Inside, however, her heart was pounding madly in her chest. There was a part-and she was not ready to admit to herself how big this part was-that _did _want him to just finish the job. _Come on, Beckett, you're stronger than all this, _she tried to tell herself. _You have to be strong, for Castle. You know he's coming for you. You know he is. YOU KNOW. Just hold on, okay? Hold on. _

But, the truth was, it had been quite a long time that Master had held her captive. Because of her frequent bouts of unconsciousness, she had no idea if it had been a day, a week, or even longer. He'd remembered to feed her once in awhile (and whether that was once a day or more often, she had no clue) so she knew that she wouldn't starve to death. Her wounds, however, were a different story. The cuts in her arms were already beginning to show signs of infection and she knew that if she didn't get medical attention soon, things would get a lot worse.

Not to mention the...the other damage. She couldn't even think the word, couldn't even make it real. Her whole body throbbed with pain from the whole ordeal. It was as though the sheer agony of it all had taken possession of her-it was pretty much all she could think about. The old her could put her own discomfort behind her and focus on other things. But she wasn't _her _anymore. Master had seen to that.

_You can't let him win. You can't let this son of a bitch beat you, _she tried to encourage herself. _You didn't let Maddox win, you haven't let Bracken win, so you can't let this bastard win. Castle's coming. _But even as she thought this, she knew deep down that her partner, as smart and resourceful and loving as he might be, might not be able to find her. That he might never find the room she was in. And even if he did, what was the guarantee that she'd be alive? That Master wouldn't just end it at any moment?

"I think it's time that we say goodbye to all this. Yes, I know that it is." She could hear him rustling around...and then felt a knife tracing the lines on her face.

"Why do you think that?" she asked cautiously, trying to buy herself some time. _Hurry, Castle, _she thought, hoping beyond hope that he was close. _Hurry. Please. Hurry. _

"It's part of the plan," Master answered in a clipped voice. "The most important part of the plan." He dropped a kiss to her brow. "Shame, really. If it were my way, I'd do it far differently."

"Someone put you up to this?" Beckett spit out. "You're just someone's lap dog?" She felt the sting of a slap across her cheeks as he hit her with the back of his hand.

"Don't. Call me. A lap dog," Master hissed through his teeth. "Just because I'm being paid to do something doesn't mean I'm a feeble-minded ignoramus."

"Sorry I touched a nerve," she murmured, hoping that his rage wasn't able to detect the hint of sarcasm in her voice. "So...you wouldn't stab me to death then? That's why you're touching me with the knife, right?"

"Who says you're going to get stabbed?" he taunted. "No, that's not what he wants. If it were my way, yes." His discontent was plainly evident in his bitter tone. "I'd rather just get the whole damn thing over with."

"So, you're working for a man?" It wasn't much, Beckett realized, seeing as how most masterminds turned out to be men (historically speaking), but it was something.

"If you think I'm going to tell you who my employer is, you're sadly mistaken."

"But if I'm just going to die, why would you give a damn if I knew or not?" she countered. _Unless...he wasn't planning on killing her. _The evidence around her, however, did not suggest a high likelihood of survival.

"I'm going to need you to do something," Master said, a no-nonsense way about him. "I'm going to need you to look into this camera and speak the words that I tell you to say."

"What, so you can make another video to send Castle? I know you sent the one where you were...hurting me." It still pained her like hell to think of that. And part of her knew that it always would.

"Not exactly. This is going to be a live feed to a 12th Precinct's computer, I believe. Detective Ryan's, actually." Another pang to the heart as Beckett was reminded of her friend. The friend that had probably seen that other video. God.

"Just how can you manage that technological feat?" she finally thought to ask. "It seems like a pretty big task."

"My employer is quite the expert with technology," Master said, though his voice did not reveal much pride for his employer.

"You know...you don't seem happy to be working for this guy. Why is that? Surely you're being paid enough for all this?" She felt her voice crescendo. "SURELY YOU WERE PAID ENOUGH TO VIOLATE ME?" _Not the other word, can't say the other word. _

"I'm not being paid enough when one considers the risk involved," he argued. "But you seem a great deal more upset than you were a minute ago. Don't tell me you're cracking now."

"No...no," she mumbled. "I'm fine." Truth be told, she had no idea where the outburst had come from. She thought that her emotions were relatively contained, considering the situation. But the pain, _oh, the pain, _was just _digging _into every fiber, _every pore. _

"Good," he replied. "I'm going to enjoy this. And just because I don't particularly _love _my employer doesn't mean I don't love our time together, may I add." Beckett, still with her eyes closed after all this time, heard him scrape the tripod across the floor until it was much closer to the chair where she sat bound.

"What do you want me to say during this 'live feed'?" she asked tersely.

"You're going to tell Castle where to go."

"You want him to find me?"

"Ah, something like that. Now, I'm going to hit this button, which will start the live feed. I'm going to mouth the words to you, which means you're going to have to open your eyes. And don't worry, I've added a few lights so you'll be able to see. Say them verbatim. You don't want to know the consequences if you don't." He made a slitting noise with his mouth, and if Beckett had to guess, she would say that he ran his index finger along his throat.

"Fine," she breathed. _It wasn't fine, it hadn't been fine, it won't be fine until Castle comes. Castle. Castle, please. Please find me. Get me out of here. I don't want to show all my fear...but I'm scared and everything hurts. Everything, Castle. "_Fine."

She opened her eyes.

"All right, then." Beckett watched nervously as Master pushed a button on the camera. He waited a few moments. Kate suddenly became cognizant of the fact that there was a computer set up on a table next to the tripod. This was perhaps so that Master could see Castle and the boys as they huddled around Ryan's computer. She heard a shout (_whose voice? Ryan? Castle? Espo?) _and sudden shuffling as the boys clustered around the computer.

"Detective Beckett is going to tell you men something," Master said, although he was not visible to the camera. He mouthed some words, which Beckett was able to recognize easily.

"Don't you want to find me?" she asked the men she could not see...and the man she wanted to see most of all. "Castle, don't you want to find me?" She tried to keep her voice even, unbroken, hoping against hope that he would realize these weren't her own words.

"Kate? Kate! Of course I do! Of course I want to find you! Are you okay?" She felt her heart splinter in her chest. More than anything she wanted to see his face on Master's screen. She wanted to see that friendly face, that reassuring smile, those kind eyes. But Master was mouthing more words now.

"If you want to find me, you're going to have to hurry. There's not much time."

"Kate, where are you? Look around, okay? Tell me what you see!" She could hear the sheer panic in his voice. "Where are you?"

"You're going to have to search the woods for me." _The woods? Was that really where they were? _It made sense, she supposed. They were isolated, after all.

"Okay...okay. Do you know where in the woods, Kate?" His desperation was clearly peaking. "Where, Kate?" His voice was now becoming clogged with tears. Beckett felt a clump of her own emotions balling up in her throat as well.

"Under...under the ground," she whispered after Master prompted her. _He's going to bury me, _she realized. _Find me? He's going to find my body. _It felt like a sick joke. She felt like she could vomit. _Castle..._

"NO!" he cried. "NO, KATE! I WILL FIND YOU BEFORE THAT HAPPENS!" The reverberations of his yells clanged violently in her ears.

"It has to be that way. I'll be under the ground," she muttered. "Wharton State Forest."

"Okay. Okay. But we'll find you. And we'll find you too, you son of a bitch! You're not going to get away with this!"

"But he will," Kate was forced to say. "He will."

"No, he won't," she could hear Castle promise. "You hang in there, Kate, you hear me? Hang in there. We're coming. We're coming to get you. I'm not losing you. I love you."

Master turned the camera off and powered down the computer. He turned to face her.

"Time to get digging, I suppose."

_Yeah, I know the tech stuff is bad. Like really bad. But I took a bunch of creative liberties, so please be gentle. I'm not sure how I feel about this whole chapter...honest (yet civil and considering of the fact that I am still a high-school student and not an IT nor an experienced writer) feedback would be appreciated. Thanks._


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

_So I just want to give a special thanks to the anon reviewer who gave me some awesome and spot-on positive critique. Looking back, I realize that I agree with what you said. Thank you for being polite in your review and taking the time to type that all out. It certainly will help me properly characterize Castle in these future chapters and for that you have my gratitude. _

"Wharton State Forest? Where the hell is that?" Esposito asked once the computer screen went black.

"It's about a hundred miles from here...it's in New Jersey," Ryan answered after a quick Google search. "A hundred and fifteen thousand acres, too. We're going to need manpower. The New Jersey Police can help us, but we have jurisdiction because Beckett was taken in New York."

"Hold on a minute. If Tyson is behind this, we better be super prepared. He's proven himself to be more than capable of taking us on. We'll need a bomb squad, a SWAT team, the works." Castle, who had calmed considerably since the 'conversation' with Kate, finally spoke.

"You're right. We'll take every available man." The three men got up from their seats, not wanting to waste a moment.

Meanwhile, Beckett lay in an open hole in the middle of the forest. Master had yet to fill it with the soil she'd already displaced from it. It appeared he was waiting...waiting for Castle? The boys? But why would he do that? Wasn't the whole point that they had to race to find her? Her brain was far too scrambled to come up with other theories. Hell, Castle's absurd logic made more sense than the ideas currently whirling around in her mind.

"What are you waiting for?" she finally dared ask. "What's the point of prolonging the inevitable?" Master, who had been pacing in a circle, stopped.

"I'm waiting for my employer," he answered through gritted teeth. "He's very nearly late."

"You know, you could just leave now. Before he gets here. If you don't want to be caught up in this nasty business, you probably should. I mean, the whole police department is headed this way now." He gave her a funny look, something that troubled Beckett deeply.

"My employer has promised I will make it out of here all right," he murmured quietly. "I won't be going back to jail. He's giving me a getaway vehicle."

"You honestly trust that your employer will actually follow through with that? From what it sounds like, he's not one to be trusted. I would've thought you wouldn't put so much stock in what he _promises _you."

"I have faith on this one," Master responded sleekly. There was silence for a few moments. And then Beckett watched as another figure approached her captor.

Jerry Tyson. Castle had been right all those months ago. Despite the multiple rounds her partner had put through his chest, despite that lunge off the bridge...he was still alive. She supposed part of her had always known, had always trusted Castle's gut. But still, seeing him in this moment was more than a little shocking.

"I should've figured it was you," she snarled with every ounce of energy she could muster. "Give it up, Tyson. You've tried to break Castle twice now. Third time won't be the charm." But Tyson merely laughed.

"I would think after he saw that video of you and this man making love, it actually might destroy him completely." It sickened Beckett that Tyson would refer to...to _it _as lovemaking.

"Do you honestly think the pair of you are going to be able to outsmart the NYPD?" she asked once she found her voice again. "There's a lot of manpower."

"Which reminds me," Master suddenly interjected. "The getaway car. Where is it?" He peered around Tyson's body, as though somehow the smaller man was blocking his view of a vehicle. It wasn't, of course.

"You won't be needing it," Tyson informed him matter-of-factly.

"Oh, don't give me this bullshit!" Master spat out. "I have done everything you wanted. Give me the fucking car now!"

And then Tyson pulled out his gun and shot Beckett's captor three times in the chest. The brute crumpled to the ground and moved no more. Beckett found herself incredibly confused by the whole situation. And by Master himself. He'd seemed at least somewhat intelligent, but this? This seemed incredibly stupid.

"What the hell is even going on?" she asked Tyson.

"That idiot, so self-assured of his own intelligence, seemingly so untrusting of me, was possibly the biggest buffoon I could ever hope to find. It only took a few drugs and I could still manipulate him. He was fighting it a bit, as you often heard, when he complained about me. He was wired the whole time-I heard everything he said." Beckett's mind flashed back to all the time she'd spent with Master. _Funny, he never sounded all that drugged. But then, how do I know I'm not under the influence?"_

"You're not." _Damn, she'd said that out loud. _Smooth.

"Tyson, how do you expect to make it alone? Really?" It was all she could think to say. "You might as well give yourself up." Inside though, she knew that he was far more intelligent than the way she was treating him.

"Really, Detective, I did not expect you to be as stupid as this waste pile here," the serial killer said, prodding Master's body with his toe.

"What are you talking about?" But she already knew. She supposed she'd known for awhile now.

In the car, Castle was kneading his hands nervously on his lap as Esposito drove and Ryan sat in the passenger seat. A whole fleet of police cars drove ahead of them-_oh, why did they have to have the shittiest car? _

Something didn't feel right. It was too easy. Far too easy.

"Guys, let me off here!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I don't think she's in the woods at all. That story doesn't make sense."

"You sure, Castle? I kinda got the feeling that this was actually sincere, that he was drawing us to the place." Ryan, normally in full support of his crazy theories, was staring quizzically at him.

"Yeah, I thought that at first. But guys. This is Tyson we're talking about here. He plays games. We've been so caught up in finding Kate"-his voice catches in his throat for a second at the mere vocalization of her name-"that our normal methods have been abandoned. She won't be there. I can feel it. Let me out here. It's me he really wants, anyway. I'm the real target, not you, and not even Kate. You can try to radio the other cops in...or go down and see for yourselves. But I need to get out." Before anyone else could say anything, he yanked the door open and burst free.

But where to start? She was in the woods, that much he could feel. Beckett would kill him if she knew he was relying this much on sheer intuition, but at the same time, he could _feel _that it was right. It made sense that Tyson would bury her alive. He was a sadist; he enjoyed torture. It was just that the location had to be different.

Whipping out his phone, he hurriedly searched the maps, looking for something, anything, that made sense. That would be a place where Tyson could take Kate. _A woods near Ithaca, _his phone directed him. It was closer to the city, which Castle supposed would amuse 3XK more-the knowledge that she'd been that close.

Yes, that had to be it. It had to be. Unconsciously, his finger tapped the Photos app on his phone. Kate's smiling face flooded his screen, her eyes sparkling and alive, just like the last time he'd seen her.

"Kate, I'm coming for you. Save your air if you're already underground. I'm coming. I know you're here. I don't know exactly _how _I know, but I do. I'm coming. Hang on."

He hailed a cab and in no time they were headed to the woods. To Kate.

_A/N: Normally as a writer, I don't like to rely a lot on intuition because it feels like a cop-out, but at the same time, I think Castle did have solid evidence to back up his reasoning for leaving. He didn't have to spell it out to Rysposito because they would know (having had that prior 3XK experience). That's just how I perceive it. Thanks for reading!:)_


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

_A/N: So I noticed with this chapter I got about half the reviews I got for previous chapters. It's not so much the review count so much as it is I wonder if people are still reading. I hope you are! Things will get better for Caskett soon! Now for the update that was SUPPOSED to come yesterday..._

Castle made his way through the woods cautiously. He was unarmed and alone, the combination of which rarely had a good outcome. Damn his stupid brain for not thinking of this earlier. Damn it all, really.

"Kate?" he whispered quietly, although it became apparent that only the trees could hear him. He knew it was not particularly wise for him to be calling out when he was facing the likes of Jerry Tyson without a weapon or backup. But he had to try. For Kate, he always had to try.

He hoped beyond hope that she wasn't underground yet. That Tyson and his minion were letting her be until he reached her. It seemed highly improbable that such would be the case, but he had to have faith. Kate always liked the silver linings in his books. No. _Likes. She's still alive, _he chastised himself. _She's still alive. _

Castle continued to tread lightly through the thick clumps of trees. The smell of petrichor flooded his nose as his shoes slapped against the damp leaves. The air was moist and thick around him, swathing him in a sticky blanket. Several bugs zipped near his head, some gnawing on his neck before he was able to swat them away.

_Oh, Kate, where are you? _he cried inwardly. _Where are you? _His desperation was mounting. He felt as though he'd scoured every _inch _of the damn woods. And still there had been no sign of his partner. No sign at all. And he hadn't heard a sound, either, although with all the thoughts jumbling around in his head, this wasn't terribly surprising.

_Maybe I was wrong. _His heart sank in his chest. _Just because I wouldn't write something one way doesn't mean it can't happen. _All the hope that had welled up within him came crashing down. He _had _been wrong. And Kate's life hung in the balance. The boys and the other cops were headed to Wharton, but he figured that location could be just as wrong also. For all they knew, she might not even be in America. _Alexis was in freaking Paris, _he remembered painfully.

And then, suddenly, he heard a noise.

It sounded like a shovel.

Like someone was digging.

And then he heard a murmuring voice...a voice that easily could be Tyson's. Castle started to run. He ran, ran faster than he ever had in his life because _this was Kate, it was Kate, he was going to find her, finally, finally. He was going to find Kate! _His knee, fresh from four weeks in a cast, throbbed mightily, but this did not deter him. Nothing could.

A figure stood over a mound of dirt. As Castle approached the man, his heart caught in his throat as realized that under the mound lay Kate. _No! _He prayed with everything he had in him that she hadn't been there long, that there were still traces of oxygen, that, somehow, she was still breathing.

"Took you long enough," Tyson finally spoke once Castle was mere inches from him. "What's the matter? Getting too old to run?" Even in the dim light, it was hard to miss the devilish smirk that appeared on his face.

"She under there?" Castle panted, his lungs burning from the intensity of his sprint. "Tyson, let her go. This has always been about you and me. Bury me instead. This is our story. Not Kate's." He hoped by using her name that he had humanized her in some way, that Tyson could perhaps make a trade, life for life.

"Our story? This isn't about a damn book, Castle. But if you insist on that cliched metaphor...what is our story?"

"Our story? You know our story. It's written in the blood of the innocent people you killed. But that isn't what you want to hear, is it Tyson? What is it you really want? Because it doesn't make sense that you would want Kate." He felt his voice crack a little. Part of him wanted to simply take Tyson out by whatever means necessary and then dig Kate out...but he knew the experienced killer had a far better chance of winning a fight than a bestselling author. Even with all his emotions and adrenaline pumping, it was unlikely he would make it out alive, much less a victor.

"You want Kate," Tyson said lowly. "It's written all over your face. You don't want anything else more than you want her. You want her in your arms again. You want her lips against yours as you make love. You want to see her smile at you as you wake up together in the mornings. You want to give her the world because you love her more than you thought possible and you know she loves you too.

"And that's why I want her. Oh, don't misconstrue what I'm saying. She's a damn good bang from what I've heard but my real desire is to make you _see. _To make you _feel _the pain of watching her suffer, watch her torment...and know that you can't do anything to stop it. That you can't do anything to help her." But Castle wasn't going to be fazed by the ravings of a sadistic psychopath. The bastard who had held Kate captive (_God, is that his body on the ground? Good riddance, I hope he burns in hell) _had basically already told him all this.

"Is this all because you're angry that you didn't get to kill me back when you were framing me for a homicide? Is this what this is all about?" Part of him felt a great sense of incredulity. And part of him, inexorably, felt guilty. He knew-_he knew-_that his survival was not his fault. But still, Kate was dying and maybe she wouldn't be if he simply allowed Tyson to kill him.

"Partly. But remember, Castle, what I told you that night I visited you in the jail cell: it's not the act of murder that's the most enticing. It's the planning. It's watching you and Beckett continue in your relationship, knowing that your love for each other is growing, and then snatching her away from you. It's using my pawn here"-he kicked the dead man with his largest toe-"as a way to get to you. It's..._all of it. Every last detail._"

"So are you going to kill me or can I please get Kate?" he asked, realizing with a sinking heart that it might already be too late. _God, why did Tyson have to go on a fucking rant? WHY? KATE'S DYING. _

"It's going to be too late," 3XK murmured. "You're going to be too late to save her."

But Castle had had enough. With a strength he didn't know he possessed, he knocked into Tyson with his full body weight, causing the killer to topple over. The writer's hand landed on a gun-a stroke of luck that surely came from the heavens. He squeezed the trigger and it was as though a balloon had been deflated as Tyson exhaled his last.

"Kate!" Castle cried, hands pawing into the dirt. Tears streaked his face as he displaced handful after handful of earth with no Kate in sight. He continued anyway, even though his vision had long since blurred, even though the pain in his knee had long since passed his pain threshold.

His hand suddenly fell upon hair. Her hair. _God. _His whole body shaking with the sheer intensity of the moment, he pulled her limp body from the makeshift grave, laying her on the soft ground. She was covered in dirt, scratch marks and contusions everywhere. Her eyes were closed and the few spots of skin that weren't dirty or scarred were deathly pale.

And she wasn't breathing.

He grasped her wrist.

No pulse, either.

Wasting no time, he began CPR. _Thirty chest compressions, two breaths. Come on, Kate. Breathe. Breathe, Kate. _Over and over his palm slammed against her chest, over and over his lips covered hers as he breathed life into her body.

"KATE!" he exclaimed. "COME ON!" His body was wracked by sobs, but he didn't stop compressions. With trembling fingers, he dialed for an ambulance, the words he spoke to the dispatcher not truly his but those of a man who had just lost everything. _As if the paramedics will be able to do a damn thing. _

"I love you. I love you, Katherine Houghton Beckett," he murmured, grazing his lips across her forehead. _She couldn't be gone, she just couldn't be gone. How could she be? They still had a whole life to live together. They deserved that life, a life filled with laughter and happiness and love. _

He restarted compressions with even more intensity. _If she hadn't given up, he couldn't either._

"You have to breathe, okay? Okay? Breathe, Kate! Come back to me! You have to come back, Kate, you have to come back. Come on." He once again poured his oxygen into her mouth. "Come on, I'm giving you the air. You can do it, Kate. I _know _you're still in there. I know it. Just come back. Please, Kate. Come back."

Nothing.

With a great heaving sigh, he slammed his fist against her chest. _He had to try...something, anything...he had to try. She couldn't be gone._

Kate gasped.

Castle watched in amazement as her chest began to rise and fall, unsteady at first, but quickly falling into a rhythm. Her hand weakly reached up and touched his shirt. Still in a state of disbelief, her partner gathered her broken body in his arms. He cradled her, swaying gently as he waited for the paramedics to arrive.

"Thank you," he whispered, placing a tender kiss in her hair. "I love you so much. So much, Kate. You're safe now. I've got you. It's all going to be okay."

_She was alive._


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Four hours. Castle had been sitting in the hospital waiting room for four hours. Four hours without an update from a nurse, four hours with nothing but stony silence around him...four hours without Kate.

The ambulance had arrived surprisingly quickly. Castle had gingerly handed Kate over to the waiting paramedics after being assured that yes, they would do everything they could to help her and, yes, he could ride with her to the hospital and did he really think that they would just _leave _him in the woods? After repeated assurance, he felt comfortable enough to go and check on Tyson.

There was no bulletproof vest this time. No bridge to jump off. He was dead...finally, irrevocably, finished. Castle found himself incredibly curious as to why the highly intelligent killer had not better protected himself. It would certainly not be the way he would write it.

But, for once, he was not the author; he was the protagonist, the hero character. He'd actually done it-he had saved her. And he had never been happier. The time for wondering about motives, about Tyson's bizarre demise...was not now.

This time was for Kate.

He had held her hand as the ambulance sped towards the hospital, squeezing her fingers gently as though he could somehow transfer his energy into her limp digits. The paramedics had placed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth in the hopes that it could further help in stabilizing her breathing. Castle had run his fingers along her forehead, tenderly brushing against the cuts and bruises. He had winced at each mark, as though he himself had been struck, had been slapped...had been tortured. He kissed every visible injury on her face, his lips no more than a whisper on her skin.

"It's all going to be okay," he had promised her, repeating the words over and over until they became a mantra. It was bullshit and he knew it. Of course she wasn't okay. She might never be okay. He'd seen the video. He'd heard her whimpers. He'd felt her lifeless body in his arms as he tried to revive her. He'd smelled the blood and the faint odor that only comes with infected wounds. He'd tasted the pain she'd gone through as he kissed her skin-it had cloyed on his tongue.

He had washed his hands once he'd been separated from Kate.

It took vigorous scrubbing for the blood to come off.

But part of him knew that it would never truly fade.

Ryan and Esposito had arrived at the hospital two hours after he and Kate had. Captain Gates, however, had called them in for the administrative part of what she called "the situation." The detectives had at first balked at her orders, demanding that they be allowed to stay and get updates on their friend. Their captain, though sympathetic and herself worried about Beckett's condition, had nonetheless insisted on their presences at the 12th. Castle promised to keep them in the loop.

The writer had also taken it upon himself to call Jim Beckett and inform him that his daughter was alive and safe. The cry of relief that had fallen from the older man's mouth was one of the most emotion-filled sounds that Castle had ever heard. He felt terrible, knowing that a randomly-assigned officer had taken care of Jim during the long search and he himself hadn't done anything to console his partner's father. Then again, he supposed that he wouldn't have been all that reassuring. Jim had stepped out about ten minutes ago to get a coffee, first demanding that Castle send him a text should the doctor come in with news.

Finally, he phoned his mother and informed her of Kate's rescue. Alexis had been home as well. Both of them were delighted by the news and promised they would drop by the hospital soon. Castle was filled with a sense of joy when he realized how happy Alexis was. He knew that Kate and his daughter had been talking occasionally, but hadn't realized until now that the two had really bonded. It was nice to think that she saw their family as having four members.

It turned out that it wasn't necessary. Castle snapped back to reality as he realized that Kate's father was standing in front of him, two coffees in hand.

"I believe Katie will owe you one less," he said with a slight smile as he passed the hot drink over. Castle nodded, finding himself cheered by the fact that Beckett had shared so much of their relationship with her dad.

"Still haven't heard a damn thing," the writer scowled. "It's been forever. I would have thought they would be done by now." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, longing for the comfortable couch back at his loft.

"But wouldn't it be more worrisome if they were done right away? That is, if there was nothing they could do?" Jim reminded him.

"I suppose." There was an unsettling silence for a few moments, broken only by Castle's foot tapping in a staccato rhythm against the floor.

"Thank you," Jim suddenly said. "Thank you for saving my little girl." Their eyes met, both of them knowing that he wasn't just talking about this most recent rescue.

"I had to. I can't live without her," he replied sincerely. "I love your daughter very much." Beckett's father smiled wanly.

"You didn't have to say the words. It's written all over your face. Not to mention that you've hung around her for this long." The pair ceased talking as a doctor suddenly approached them.

"Mr. Beckett? Richard Castle?" he asked. Apparently, Castle had been added to Kate's Emergency Contacts-he'd done the same with her.

"Yes?" Neither one knew who had spoken first.

"She's stable." There was a moment in which nothing could be heard but relieved exhales. "Her arms were badly infected and the wounds had clearly let out a lot of blood. He didn't completely slice up her arteries, which is why she's still alive. We saw signs of attempted drowning and we will have to monitor that for pneumonia. There was mild internal bleeding in her abdomen, which we fixed."

"Did he-" Jim began, voice trembling, the question asking itself in those two words. Castle's heart sank. Nobody had told him the full truth, apparently.

"Yes," the doctor answered cautiously. "Many of her injuries were from sexual assault. She's going to need counseling, certainly, and the strongest of support systems. Please be aware of the magnitude of the trauma Ms. Beckett has suffered. It's going to take a long time for her to heal, both physically and mentally. In my professional experience, people that come in with her types of injuries are never quite the same." He answered a few more medical questions for Jim, but Castle was no longer listening. He couldn't bear to hear about Kate's pain anymore.

He just wanted to see her. He needed to see for himself that she was alive, that she would recover, that even though she wouldn't be exactly the same person she would still be...Kate.

"Are visitors permitted?" he asked once the doctor finished speaking.

"Yes, both of you are allowed, seeing as you're both family on her chart." Castle, despite himself, smiled. _Family. _Yes, Kate was family.

They quickly arrived at Kate's room. Castle entered first, nervous at the prospect of seeing her so fragile. Jim had urged him forward, however, so he didn't really have a choice.

"Kate," he whispered as he sat down at her bedside. "Oh, Kate." She was unconscious, as the doctor had warned en route to her room. Both her arms were bandaged, as well as several places on her face. A cannula rested directly below her nostrils, providing her with oxygen. An IV connected to her forearm. She was still ghostly pale, but at least she'd been cleaned of the dirt and stray flecks of blood.

"I'm here now," Castle murmured. "Your dad and I are both here." He grasped her hand in his, his thumb softly tracing shapes into her clammy skin. "You're safe now, okay? You're safe. And...and I love you. I love you so much. I'm so happy that you're still here." He pressed a kiss onto her forehead, her cheek, her lips.

"I'm going to be here. Always."

_Thanks again to those who reviewed and supported me! We still have a ways to go..._


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

_A/N: Just warning all of you that I am currently on vacation. Updates may slow considerably until I get back. It honestly depends. Do not assume I have abandoned the story-there's still a lot more to explore and I cannot wait to do so. And I cannot thank you all enough for your support and kindness._

_Castle slammed his empty glass of scotch on the table. No leads. None. It had been two years. Two years and not a damn clue._

"_Richard? Everything all right?" his mother asked as she stepped into the kitchen. Her eyes fell upon the bottles that sat near the kitchen sink. "Oh, Richard." She sat down next to him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder._

"_Two years today, Mother. Two years. Nothing." He shook his head in disgust. "She believed in the NYPD. And they failed her. They failed her twice. Once with her mom...and now with her." His mother could hear the resignation in his voice, the defeat so palpable in his tone._

"_I know." There was nothing else Martha could say. For Richard Castle, writer of wrongs, master of the macabre, words had long ago ceased to mean anything. Nothing held importance, really. Except Kate._

_It had been two years. Two years of searching, of long nights spent scanning files and poring over even the tiniest of details, of desperate hoping...of gazing into the picture of the smiling face he might never see again._

_Two years without Kate._

_Two years with scotch._

_Today, though, he found himself frustrated by the alcohol. Perhaps some TV would calm his nerves. He hadn't really watched television since Kate disappeared. Each program he watched would remind him of her in one way or another. But maybe today would be different. _

"_Sad news to report today as the NYPD confirms that the body found in a state park belongs to none other than homicide detective Katherine Beckett."_

_Castle heard the phone ring. It must have been Gates. He wasn't even bothered by the fact that the media found out before he did. He wasn't even bothered by the fact that they still hadn't arrested the bastard that took her._

"_They found Kate," he said aloud, his voice even and tempered. "They found her body." Nothing. He felt nothing._

_He said it again. And again._

_Nothing._

_Two years without Kate._

_Two years with nothing._

"Sir? Are you okay?" a nurse asked. Castle startled awake. His eyes darted wildly around his surroundings, oxygen falling from his mouth in sharp puffs. After a moment, realizing that he was still in the hospital, still holding Kate's hand, he nodded.

"Yeah, yeah," he nodded, appeasing the nurse, who had been wearing a perplexed expression on her face.

"Your girlfriend is alive, you know," she said as she took Kate's vitals. When she caught sight of his agape mouth, she added, "You were mumbling in your sleep about 'finding her body.'"

"Was I?" he said in a dismissive tone, not wanting to discuss this with a virtual stranger.

"Yes, Mr. Castle. You're not the first that has had nightmares about their loved one, don't you worry. She'll be all right soon." Her reassurances, Castle noted, didn't really meet her eyes. Thankfully, the nurse quickly finished her duties and left the room.

"I know you're alive, Kate," he whispered into her ear. "I **know.**" Damn his stupid nightmare. Damn it all, really. He squeezed her hand tightly, feeling her pulse thrum under his fingers.

And then he felt her squeeze back.

"Kate?" To his astonishment, she moaned softly and twitched her fingers. He could see her eyes moving under their lids. He knew he _should _call for that nurse again, but at the same time, he didn't want to startle her by having too many people in the room. After all, for all he knew, she might think she was still buried under the ground.

"Come on, Kate," he urged, though he was far more calm than he had been when he had to give her CPR. "Wake up. Open your eyes." He tenderly ran his fingers through the tangles of her hair that fanned out across the pillow.

"Castle," she breathed-and he could not remember a time when he had been happier. _She spoke, she knew who he was_ and he didn't know even yesterday if he would ever hear her beautiful voice again.

"Yeah, Kate. It's me. Open your eyes, okay?" He traced her cheek with his free thumb. "Wake up, please." After a few moments, her eyes fluttered open. She squinted as she tried to adjust to all the light. Castle, noticing that the transition was quite difficult for her, got up and closed the blinds.

"That better?" he asked. She nodded slowly, though there was a definite expression of confusion on her face.

"I'm...I'm in the hospital, right?"

"Yeah, you're in the hospital. We found you." All of it, the magnitude of the entire situation, hit him at once. With as much gentleness as possible, he leaned over and wrapped his arms around her frail body. "You're safe now." She stiffened slightly in his embrace. Realizing that this much physical contact might be hurting in her, he stood back up.

"Thank you," she whispered after a moment.

"For what?"

"Finding me. Thank you for finding me." She exhaled deeply and closed her eyes. Castle worried that she was falling asleep again. It wasn't that he wanted to begrudge her the rest she needed, but, if he were honest with himself, he had missed her so terribly much while she was gone and now that she was back and in his arms, he didn't want to miss out on another moment. But she spoke again.

"Did you find him? Tyson, I mean. Did you get him? The last thing I remember is him...piling dirt over top of me." She blinked back tears. "Please tell me you got him"

"Yeah. We got him. He's dead, Kate. There's no way he can hurt you again. I promise...you're safe." He rested his hand against her cheek. "It's all over."

"Do you know how long I will have to be here?" she asked abruptly, pulling her face away from his hand. "I don't want to talk about him any more." Understandable, Castle realized.

"Okay. Okay. Well, I don't know how long you'll have to be here. You do have some injuries that have to heal...you've been through a lot."

"I think I know what I've been through, Rick." She suddenly sounded harsh and guarded. Castle felt a wave of remorse roll over him. For a man that had made his millions writing books, he surely was having a terrible time not sounding like a jackass. _What do I even say? What is the protocol in this situation? _Part of him wanted to leave, to go and call Jim and tell him that he could go see his daughter privately because he was screwing up so royally.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that." Her face did not soften. Nervously, he continued, "I-I just don't know what to say...I know I sound like an idiot and all, but it's just so good to see you. So good. I missed you so much, Kate." He kissed her forehead. "I never thought I could miss someone that much."

"I missed you too," she mumbled. Castle moved his lips to hers, craving the comfort that their kisses usually brought, but she instead pushed him back.

"NO!" she cried. "DON'T!" Her eyes were wide with fear. He jumped back, removing his hands from hers, feeling blood rush to his face.

"I'm sorry, Kate. That was dumb...and thoughtless of me. I'm so sorry." God, he really was an idiot. What the hell was he thinking? After what she'd gone through? "I'm so sorry," he repeated over and over, still not daring to touch her. She was trembling slightly in her bed. The worst part of it was that he really could do nothing but murmur sweet nothings and wait for her to calm.

"You didn't mean anything," she finally breathed. "I know you didn't. I know you would never try to hurt me. I just...I need time, okay?" She smiled at him, though her eyes did not reflect any of the happiness her mouth showed.

"I get that. Look, Kate, that was my fault, okay? You take all the time you need. I'll be here the whole time, all right? I'm not gonna leave you. We're going to make it through this." He placed his hand on the bed, leaving it up to her whether she took it or not. _Slow, Rick. _He felt incredibly insensitive, but in reality, _he had just missed her touch so goddamn much and it was as though he was possessed by a need for her._

"You promise?" Her eyes bore into his, revealing all the pain and confusion she felt. They looked older too, as though she had aged ten years in less than a week.

And maybe she had.

"I promise. I promise I'll stay with you. Always." Kate smiled faintly at his use of the word, their word.

But Castle noticed that she never once reached for his hand again that day.

_A/N: I approached this from the standpoint that Castle would be really insecure (not know what to do, want to hug and kiss her but then realizing that is upsetting) and Beckett would kind of close up after a bit. That was my take-but I feel uneasy about this chapter, in all honestly. This one was the hardest to write so far. Constructive critique would be lovely for use in future chapters. Thanks in advance._


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

_A/N: Sorry for the delay...I'm back from vacation and finally have the right headspace where I can write. Thanks again for the wonderful words and for putting up with the wait._

"You know, Castle, you could go home. Get some proper rest. I don't like thinking that you're letting yourself go on my account," Beckett murmured sleepily from her bed. Castle, who had been sitting quietly next to-but not touching-her, shook his head.

"I'm not letting myself go. In fact, the stubble is just making me look even more ruggedly handsome, don't you think?" He smiled softly at her and she couldn't stop the corners of her lips from drifting upwards ever so slightly. It was the first time she'd looked even somewhat happy all day. Her room had been swarmed with doctors and nurses for many of her waking hours, each one checking her vitals, giving her more pain medication, scrawling notes on starch paper. To them, she was a case, not a person. The fact that Castle could still provide a modicum of comfort to her following all that was truly a miracle.

"I've been here like three days. You've been here three days. The difference is that I'm the patient and you're, well..." _Partner? Significant other? _Castle waited for her to finish the sentence but she let it dissipate into the air. He felt a lump grow in his throat and metastasize into his heart.

He had been patient these past three days. Beckett had shown no signs of wanting physical nor emotional contact with him and he had respected her wishes. The hospital psychologist had met with her once but had left the room incredibly disgruntled and had noted to the attending physician that he didn't feel "the patient" and he would "cooperate well together." _Bullshit, _Castle had thought. _Kate's seen therapists before and been fine. It must be you._ She certainly needed someone professional to talk to, someone that didn't have expectations for her.

_Talk _was maybe the operative word, though. Her urgings that he should go home were some of her first words in nearly twenty four hours. The rest of the time, she simply lay in bed, her eyes either closed or gazing at some far-off place. It broke Castle, really gnawed at him, that she was probably right back in those woods, six feet under, waiting for life, waiting for death. And what further did him in was that there was nothing he could do to help her. Except be there.

He was there.

When night fell, he made sure that he stayed awake as long as possible, just in case Kate had a nightmare. Surprisingly, though, she slept peacefully the whole time. A doctor had told him that maybe the bad dreams wouldn't start until much later, until she began to truly process what had happened. Still though, he kept his vigil.

He had failed her once. He wasn't about to do it again.

"You aren't mad at me, are you?" Beckett asked suddenly, bringing Castle back to earth. He frowned, not quite sure as to why she would ask such a question. Her eyes were shining..._was that a tear on her lash?_

"What? Kate, no. No. I'm not mad at you. Why would you think such a thing?" He leaned over and wiped the stray tear away. She twitched slightly at the contact and he pulled his hand away.

"I don't _know, _Castle, I don't know. But you just sit here all day and you don't _say _anything and normally you're talking _all the time _and now you're not." Her words came out rushed, as though the dam had finally burst and all her thoughts flowed freely from her mouth.

"I didn't think you wanted me to talk. I want you to have your space. But I'm here, you know, in case you _do _want to talk. Or if you want a hug. Kate, you know that I would rather be with you than be anywhere else. And now that you're back with me...I can't be apart from you for too long." Beckett gazed into his eyes, haunted, loving, and _home. _But then she blinked a few times and pulled herself from their depths.

"You don't have to change yourself just because all this happened," she muttered, casting her own eyes downward. "I don't want you to be different."

"I'm not different!" Castle blurted out, the stickiness of the lie coating his tongue. "I just thought the quiet would be best for you, you know? Because of all that's happened."

"I know what's happened!" Beckett exclaimed. "But don't change, Castle. Talk my ear off. Okay? Just talk." _Anything to keep the demons away, anything to stop the memories of the dirt smothering her body, of the knife running through her flesh, of __**his**__ body in hers. Anything, Castle. Anything. Just talk. Please, stay the same because everything's different and I'm different. _

But she didn't say all that. She just asked him to talk. About anything-not _that-_but everything else.

He talked about their case with the dead magician. _If only Zalman Drake could come back from the ether and cast all of this into his disappearing box, _he found himself wishing.

Alakazam, feelings.

Sometime later, two FBI agents filed into Beckett's room, relatively unannounced. Neither one appeared particularly friendly. Noticeably missing was Agent Jordan Shaw. Castle had figured that if anyone were to handle this case, it would be her or even Will Sorenson, but apparently the Bureau didn't really give a damn about personal connections its agents had to victims. _Victims? _Had he truly thought that in his head? _Kate's not a victim. She's not. _

"We're here to get your statement," the taller agent said briskly to Beckett, who seemed troubled at the sudden appearance of strangers in her room.

"Excuse you? I don't know if she's ready to talk about this," Castle stated, standing up and facing the feds. "Can her statement not wait until she's had more time?"

"We're going to need an account from you too, Mr. Castle. Jerry Tyson and Connor Doran were found dead in the woods and you were the last person who saw them alive. I know you told the officers that Doran was killed by Tyson and then you offed Tyson in self-defense, but we're still going to need a statement, all right?" The other agent was no kinder, no less harsh.

"Yeah, you can have my statement, but I don't think Kate should give hers now," Castle asserted, moving to position himself in front of Beckett's bed, as though he was protecting her from the agents, from what had happened to her, from everything.

"It's not really up to you, is it though, Mr. Castle?" The first agent sighed. "Look, we need these statements. We aren't insensitive to Detective Beckett's situation, but as she is herself a law enforcement officer, she should know better than most that the longer we hold off on this, the worse off we all are. She's been here three days, so we're already a tad behind the eight-ball."

"But how is it worse for everyone if we wait? Tyson is dead, Doran is dead."

"We still have to document all this. We have to make sure that neither of you are accomplices in anything. It's only because there was a mix-up with files that we didn't get your statement earlier, Mr. Castle. We have to make sure you weren't part of her abduction." There. Finally. At least _someone _had said the word.

"I would never hurt her," Castle promised the agents. "You can be sure of that."

"Good. Prove that when we talk to you. But first, we need to talk to Detective Beckett. Please wait outside her room. We don't want you to influence her answers." Still grumbling, the writer left his post. He stood resolutely by her door, listening to the murmurs of the agents. Their hushed voices clearly indicated to him that they knew he would be eavesdropping. _Douchebags, _he scowled inwardly.

And then he heard Kate scream. It was loud, piercing, crescendoing into a zenith of sheer _pain, _of naked torment. Panic filling him, he rushed into the room.

She was sitting in the middle of her bed. And she was crying. Tears were creating an oasis in the center of her sheets. A pool of bad memories, of bloodstains and scars and thrusts and breaths that wouldn't come.

"What the hell is going on in here?!" Castle bellowed, rushing to Kate's side.

"Someone asked the wrong question." The shorter agent glared at his partner. "You were right. She's not ready." But Castle couldn't be happy that he was right.

"Shhh, shhh, Kate. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay." It was all he could think to say. His hand tucked some errant strands of hair behind her hair. She didn't jerk away from his touch this time.

"C-Castle...come here," she whispered, her voice broken and tortured. Somberly, Castle climbed into her bed. He kept his body completely still as she approached him and laid her head on his shoulder. When she seemed comfortable, he dared to wrap his arms around her, doing it slowly so she had enough time to tell him to stop. But she didn't.

"It's okay," he assured her again, even though it wasn't, it wasn't okay at all. "You don't have to talk about it yet." He kissed her hair.

"I...I can't," she breathed. Castle felt her tears leaking into his shirt. "I can't."

"Someday. Someday maybe you can."

"Maybe." The doubt lingered in her tone.

"Do you want me to talk? Like I did before?"

"Words aren't enough this time."

They sat in silence. A silence as loud as screams.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

"Could I please get a proper explanation as to why my partner got such insensitive agents to question her?" Castle half-yelled into his phone. He'd managed to get in contact with Jordan Shaw, no thanks to his other "guy" at the FBI. It turned out, according to his "guy", that Agent Shaw had sent the two agents in lieu of herself. She had been contacted by the officers that had reached Beckett and him in the woods first. The special nature of the abduction-the fact that it was a known serial killer-had meant that the officers had reason to contact the FBI.

"I have a full caseload, Castle. As much as I wanted to be there, it was an impossibility. Normally, I would have ensured that it was a woman that interviewed her. But it was really hectic here at the time and so I had to go with the B-team on this."

"Look, all I know is that they reduced her to tears in a matter of moments. She won't tell me what they said and they didn't really give me any details either." Castle ran a hand across his forehead, feeling the sheen of sweat that was glazing it. From the stress, no doubt. His emotions had oscillated rapidly within a short time period. He hadn't known that a person could _feel _so much all at once.

"I'll deal with them when they get back, you can be certain of this. Now, there's maybe something about this case you don't know. Something about Beckett's abductor, Jerry Tyson."

"Oh, God. Please tell me he's dead for real this time." Fear spread throughout his entire body. His heart began to palpitate, slamming against his ribcage like hammer against nail.

"He certainly is. In fact, that's a good lead-in for what I'm about to tell you." She sighed, waiting to hear if he had any reaction. There was silence. " The autopsy results are already in. Jerry Tyson had Stage IV throat cancer. He was dying, Castle. If not that day, then a couple months later."

"W-What?" But it made sense. The Tyson he remembered, the consummate survivor that flung himself off a bridge, vest riddled with bullets, was not the Tyson that stood unprotected in the woods and died so easily.

"Some people give last lectures. And then there are some people that commit last crimes," Shaw stated matter-of-factly. "You and Beckett were nothing but trouble for him ever since you started in on 3XK a couple years ago. I have the files. He wanted to go out with a bang, apparently. What better way than revenge?" Castle swallowed, trying to absorb it all.

"That's it? That's his reasoning? Is that all the FBI could find?" He knew that he wasn't being completely polite, but to hell with it. The love of his life had been through some of the worst torture he could ever imagine. She'd been the victim of the type of pain he, Master of the Macabre, could never write about. For years, he'd sat at his laptop, typing away, trying to understand for himself _why _someone could hurt another person. But when it came down to it, when it was personal, when it was _real, _the prose didn't help. There was no explanation, was there? There were excuses, yes. Throat cancer was a hell of a thing to happen to a man. But it wasn't a reason.

"Truth be told, Castle, that's more of a reason than a lot of crimes. Not everything is the way it is in Nikki Heat's world, where at least there's money or love to kill for. I know you know this-you're certainly intelligent enough-but I know it's different when it's someone you love." Castle blinked a few times. _She knew._

"How did you find out? That Beckett and I were together, I mean?"

"I'm a profiler, Mr. Castle. And I have the case files. I know how you threw a hail Mary and went off by yourself, risking your own life. And how you gave her CPR and invented your own techniques, even. I'm not saying you would have to be together to do that. I'm saying you love her."

"Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah, I really do. Thank you, Agent Shaw. Thank you for telling me all this." He hung up, dazed, without waiting for her response. His eyes flicked over to the door to Kate's room. He could hear her dad talking to her quietly. Although he already missed her because _how could he not when he'd been so close to losing her, so close_, he didn't want to take away from the limited time Jim had with his daughter.

He would have to tell her. That much was certain. He would have to look into her eyes, those beautiful hazel eyes, and tell her the truth. That Tyson had gone after her, after them, as part of his final mark on the world. As his bloody chapter in the novel of their lives, clichéd as it sounded. God, he should've hit the man's liver. His death would be slow and considerably painful. Tyson, of all people, did not deserve the agony of cancer to be cut short. He should've lived _every possible second _with the pain.

Suddenly, Castle was livid. Kate, his precious Kate, had suffered for days. She would have scars for the rest of her life, the doctors said, and that didn't even include the emotional lesions. And how long had Tyson endured what she had? His diagnosis had to have been fairly recent. Not long, then. And no one had dug a knife into his flesh, no one had _taken what wasn't theirs to have _from him, no one had shoved him under the ground where it was so dark, so solitary, so devoid of air, of life. Where was the justice? Sure, the bastard was dead now. But his exodus from existence had been quick, as effortless as falling asleep. As pulling a damn trigger.

Kate deserved justice. She'd gone down the rabbit hole for her mom, looked death in the eyes as surely as the sniper looked through the scope of his rifle. Bracken was still free, still as powerful as the blood money had made him. Couldn't she have this? Couldn't she have a time when she could truly make someone _pay _for hurting her? For hurting them?

Suddenly...he'd had it. He'd had it with being calm, with internalizing everything. He was done with easygoing, with level-headedness in crisis. He'd been calm. He'd been level-headed. And now Kate was scarred. And Tyson had died instantly.

"GODDAMMIT!" Castle bellowed, slamming his foot against the wall, not caring that he was in a public building, not concerning himself with the fact that people-Kate and her father included-could hear him. Again and again he kicked the wall, obscenities flying from his mouth. Several nurses rushed over and asked him if he was all right and _could he please be quiet because there were patients that needed to rest _but he shrugged them off.

"FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! DAMMIT! FUCK!" Finally, a sturdy, angular nurse grabbed hold of his arm and forced him away from the wall. She led him over to a chair and pushed him into it.

"Sir! Please! Pull yourself together!" Her eyes bore into his tear-filled ones. "Detective Beckett is going to recover, all right? She's not dying! There's no reason to get yourself hysterical like this!"

"Is she? Is she now? THAT BASTARD RAPED HER! HE TORTURED HER! HE NEARLY KILLED HER! SHE'S GOING TO BE SCARRED FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE? AND WHERE IS HE? HE'S DEAD! THERE'S NO TRIAL, NO JAIL TIME, NO ANYTHING. HE DIED INSTANTLY AND SHE'S GOING TO BE IN PAIN FOR A HELL OF A LOT LONGER THAN THAT!" All of his emotions, their colors as visceral as those that can be perceived with the eye, were spewing faster than he could think. He wasn't Richard Castle at the moment. He was a man that had simply _had enough _of just _sitting there _while Kate suffered, both in the chair by her desk at the 12th and by her hospital bed.

And then he paused. Stopped altogether. Inhale. Exhale. _Kate is alive, Kate __**will **__get better. She's alive. And that's all you really need. _And then Richard Castle came back to embody the shell of a man that had his head in his hands, crying.

"Are you all right now?" the nurse asked. "Is it all out?" Inhale, exhale. _Tyson can't hurt her anymore. Never. And that's all that matters. _

"Yeah. It's all out. I'm sorry." He certainly felt shame for his outburst, but only because it perhaps affected nearby patients. But he felt no embarrassment for his emotions. And he knew he wouldn't act out like that again. You can't put things back into Pandora's box. It was out. All of it.

_It was healthy to feel, sometimes._

He skirted past the nurse and into Kate's room. Jim was still at her bedside but looked up when the younger man entered. His lips parted as he saw Castle's grief-stricken face.

"Was that _you _out there?" he asked, concern in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah, it was. But I'm all right now. I just needed a moment." He sat in the chair that was beside Kate's head. As he did so, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Are you sure you're all right?" _She was asking __**him**__ if __**he**__ was all right? She was the one in the hospital._

_ "_Now I am," he answered truthfully.

"Want to tell me what that was all about?"

"Later," he promised. "Maybe later. It's not as important as what's in front of me. And that's you. You're important. I love you, Kate, all right?" He brushed some hair off her face. No flinch this time. Good.

And..for now...it was.

_A/N: Castle's not going to go crazy or yell at Kate all the time. But I see this as more of "All right, I've dealt with my emotions, I've let it out...now maybe I can be there for Kate when she starts to break down". Thanks for the continued support and constructive feedback. It's truly motivational and makes my day that much happier. _


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

"You take good care of my little girl, okay?" Jim Beckett said, placing his hand on Castle's shoulder. "You make sure she gets her rest, takes her meds, eats something everyday."

"On my honor," Castle solemnly replied, subtly nodding his head. "I promise to take care of her to the best of my abilities." The two men were standing at the hospital entrance, Castle having driven the car to the curb, waiting for the nurse to wheel Beckett down.

"I believe you." Jim gave him the faintest of smiles. "If there's one good thing that could come from all this, it's that I know my daughter has someone to be there for her in the way I wasn't when her mom...when her mom died." He swallowed, as though that solitary act could ease guilt's sting.

"Kate doesn't blame you for that," Castle murmured. "She never has. She told me herself." His mind flashed back to that night, nearly two months ago. A lifetime ago, really. Because _before, _they would have long conversations in bed, cuddled next to each other, him running his fingers through her hair, her tracing patterns into his bare skin. _Before, _they would make love into the wee hours. moans of pleasure and pledges of love amidst the ripping of fabric and the nibbling of flesh. _Before, _there weren't so many scars. _Before, _they knew deep down, although it had never been vocalized, that they could be together for their whole lives and it would never be long enough.

Before.

"I know she doesn't." Jim's words grounded Castle instantly. _"_But I blame myself."

And there was really nothing that could be said to that.

Moments later, a plump, overbearing nurse wheeled Kate out. Beckett had recently showered and was wearing a fresh set of clothes, as opposed to the ghastly hospital garments she'd been forced into until this point.

"Well, this one put up a stinking _fuss _about being wheeled down. Said she could walk." The nurse, who apparently was _not _having a good day, pursed her lips towards the two waiting men. As if they could somehow control the indomitable Kate Beckett.

Maybe it wasn't all going to change. Maybe _before _and _after _were more blurred.

"Thank you," Castle spoke aloud. "I'll take her from here." Jim leaned down and pecked his daughter on the cheek.

"You let Rick take care of you, all right?" he admonished her gently. "He loves you." With a nod to the younger man, Beckett's father strode away.

It was silent during the drive home. Beckett leaned over and pressed her cheek against the window. Her eyes closed against their will and soon she felt nothing.

And everything. _The stab wounds. The waters that threatened to suffocate her, to consume her. Him. The earth six feet above her, closing her in, stealing her breath, her fight. _

_ Castle. Castle, don't look. I don't want you to see my scars. You should have left me in the hole. I would've seen my mom again...and you wouldn't have this burden. _

"Kate? Kate? Wake up." Her eyes fluttered open. She quickly realized that she was in Castle's bed at the loft. Less than a month ago it had been _their _bed. What was it now?

"You carried me to bed?" she questioned, a hint of disbelief in her voice.

"Yeah," he responded. "Why wouldn't I? You were tired."

"You didn't have to, you know. I don't want to inconvenience you." Castle frowned.

"How could you possibly inconvenience me? It's _nothing _to take care of you. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing right now. You're family, Kate. I'm taking care of you like I would take care of Alexis or my mother." He smiled at her, hoping to reassure the face that looked so incredibly _guilty._

_ "_Castle, I've been nothing but trouble for you for several days now. Let's face it: I'm a burden. And I don't want to be." She clenched her teeth together, trying to keep her tears at bay.

"Katherine Houghton Beckett, you listen to me right now. _Stop telling yourself you're a burden. _You're selling yourself short. _You could never be a burden to me. _You hear me? Never. I don't know where this is even coming from."

"I'm not used to people taking care of me like this, okay? It's...difficult to get used to."

"You will get used to it, that I can promise." It was too much. Right now, it was just too much. She didn't want him to hover over her right now. Not now, _not when she was feeling nothing and everything all at once and dammit she hated him right now for making her feel like she was worth something when all she wanted to do was slip back into that hole and disappear. _

_ You're giving up Kate. You're letting Tyson win. And you said you wouldn't._

_ No. I'm not. I'm not giving up._

"Shut up!" Beckett exclaimed aloud. Realizing her mistake, that her thoughts had somehow become spoken words, she blushed.

"What?"

"Um...never mind. Hey, listen, can I have a moment alone?" _Time. It would take time. Isn't that what the doctors said? _

"Sure." Castle decided not to allow her request to deter him, though. She certainly needed space-it had always been in her nature. Kate Beckett was an independent creature. That, coupled with recent events, certainly warranted her some time away from others. He quietly left her room, trying not to overthink the whole situation.

Kate sat alone, trying to siphon all her thoughts from her mind. _God, I could go for a drink right now. _

And then she remembered the stash Castle had in one of his drawers. She'd asked him about it when she'd first found it, her brain flashing back to the time when it was her dad that hid his bottles. He'd shrugged her off and said that he'd taken to keeping some of his booze in his room because his mother would have loud parties at the loft with her friends and take everything that was in the liquor cabinet.

Opening the drawer, Kate found herself with enough alcohol to make her forget even her own name. _I won't drink all of this, _she promised herself. _Just a bit. I'm not my dad. I'm not. I just need to forget. That's the best freedom I'll get. _

One swig of 80-proof and she already felt better.

Another, another, another...and suddenly she had no scars.

She wasn't Kate, the victim. Nor was she Detective Beckett, tops in the NYPD.

She was nothing...and everything. All at once.

With a final large sip, she stashed the much-lighter bottle away and flung herself onto the bed.

And into a dreamless sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

"Have you given any more thought to seeing a psychologist?" _Clang. _Beckett dropped her fork onto her dinner plate. Her mouth fell open and her eyebrows converged in a V. Maybe now _wasn't _a good time to broach the subject.

"Castle, I've only been at the loft for three days. You haven't given me enough time to settle back into things just yet. I'm sure in a few more days I'll be fine." _I'll be fine. _Perhaps the most common lie she told. But, God, she did not want some _shrink _telling her what to feel, what to do, what to say. Dr. Burke had been all right, but that was _before. _The psychological fallout from her shooting felt marginalized by what had happened to her recently. She doubted very much that _anyone _could help.

"You're not. And you know you're not." His words punctuated the air as surely as Cole Maddox had hit his target with his rifle. "You need help. For the past three days, you've done nothing but mope around. Not to mention that I've smelled alcohol on your breath more than once. It smelled like the stuff I keep in my room."

"Oh my God, Castle, I'm over 21! I'm allowed to drink!" There was no mistaking the over-defensiveness in her tone.

"Kate, I know you. You don't drink alone. I'm not saying that you're becoming an alcoholic, but I am saying that maybe if you had someone to talk to, you wouldn't feel the need to ease your problems that way."

"I don't begrudge you your coping mechanisms, okay? Seriously, I'll be okay in a bit. This isn't a big deal."

"That's bullshit," Castle stated, frowning. "It _is _a big deal. You've been through-" But she cut him off.

"Don't try to tell me what I've been through."

"I'm not trying to. I'm just saying that it would be a massive psychological trauma for anyone. It's okay to ask for help."

"But I'm not asking." Beckett clenched her teeth together and evaded his piercing blue eyes, the eyes that could _see _her in a way like no other.

"You've asked before," Castle retorted, folding his arms across his chest. "You told me you saw a therapist."

"He won't be able to help me this time."

"How do you know that?" Suddenly, he felt incredibly exasperated. "How do you somehow 'know' that it won't help? You haven't even tried!" Beckett lowered her head. A lump formed in his throat as he realized that his words had come out harsher than intended.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I only want to see you get better, that's all." He reached out to touch her hand but she pulled it away.

'I think you did mean it that way, Castle," she murmured. "You just want me to get better _your _way. You just think sending me off to a psychologist is the best thing for me when, really, you don't know that. Maybe I just need to be _alone!"_

"Beckett, you've been alone for the majority of the time since you came here. I've given you plenty of space. But it's not helping. You aren't feeling any better. I'm not saying a counselor would be the best thing for you because, you're right, there might be alternate solutions, but I think you should at least give it a try. It might work, just like it did the last time."

"It won't. Know why? Because I'm _fine!" _

"KATHERINE BECKETT. YOU. ARE. NOT. FINE. Stop lying! Just stop! I have watched you fall apart ever since I first saw you in the hospital. I can't stand to watch you go through this alone." His eyes began to fill with tears before he could stop them. "I can't. You mean too much to me. You deserve to be happy again. You don't deserve to have Tyson win."

"Just because I'm coping differently than you would like _doesn't _mean that Tyson's winning!" she exclaimed, a tint of fury in her voice. "Okay? He's not! And neither is the bastard that kept me in the room!" With that, Beckett got up from the table, carried her dirty dishes to the sink, and then briskly walked out of the loft.

"Dammit," Castle uttered under his breath. "Nice job."

Beckett, meanwhile, knew that she just needed to _get out. _There was something _confining _about staying in the loft all day. And she was no one's prisoner, not anymore. So she began walking, her destination uncertain. But she liked that. It was a liberating feeling. She was free.

Or was she? _He's right, I don't normally drink alone. The last time I did that I had PTSD. _Shit.

Every word that Castle spoke to her that meal rolled around in her head. _Falling apart. You deserve to be happy. You're not fine. You don't deserve to have Tyson win. _

"He's _not _winning!" she snarled under her breath. "He isn't." She continued walking, her feet slapping against the ground with an authority that she normally didn't exercise.

"Who is Castle to say I'm not fine?" Whoops. She hadn't kept that thought to herself either. A few heads turned in her direction, all clearly wondering if she was off her rocker.

"You all right?" an old man asked, taking a few steps towards her. "Is someone bothering you?" He seemed genuinely friendly, so Beckett decided not to ignore him.

"Yeah, I think so." But the elderly gentleman seemed uneasy to take that as an acceptable answer.

"Are you sure?" he pressed. "You look like something's bothering you."

"No, really. I'm okay." _Time to go. _She skirted past the man without looking back. It may have been a little brusque, but she was in no mood to simply explain to a stranger that _no actually, I was held in a dark room by a jackass for several days and he gave me hell and now my partner is badgering me about seeing a psychologist and he doesn't even __**get **__it at all. _

And then it hit her.

The video. Castle had seen the video.

He did get it, at least some of it.

He had seen some of the worst moments of her life. He had watched as 'Master' had stripped innocence from her body, as he'd taken what she'd never offered. He had heard her moans...and then her silence when it was all over.

Castle knew. She couldn't hide how deep her pain was because he had seen it all unfold and there was nothing he could to stop. She tried to imagine what it would be like to watch someone torture Castle. Her stomach turned; it was unbearable to consider.

Beckett stopped in her tracks all of a sudden as she realized where she was standing. She was by the park.

The park where she told Castle about her walls.

And the park where she finally tore them down.

Without hesitation, she headed for the swings. Her feet scuffed the mulch as she swayed slightly in the seat. How many times had she thought back to the time when she'd been on the exact swing, rain pouring like redemption over her body...and she'd made a choice. She'd made a choice that had healed both of them.

Why couldn't she do the same thing now?

_I'm done with my bullshit, _she suddenly thought. _Castle can see through the shield I thought impenetrable. He knows what I went through. Not because the doctor told him. He __**knows. **__I've got to stop trying to fool him because in the end, I'm only fooling myself._

**_The dark room with Master._**

_I'm fine._

_**The cutting.**_

___I'm fine. _

_**The drowning attempts.**_

___I'm fine. _

_**The...the underground burial.**_

___I'm fine._

_**The...the...oh just say the word (**__I can't...I can't...I can't)_

_ ...I'm not fine_

"I'm not fine," she whispered out loud. "I'm...not...fine." And just like the rain had fallen over her all those months ago, the tears came steadfast and in torrents.

Two hours after Beckett fled from the loft, Castle heard a knock. It was shy, uncertain. Only one other time had he heard a knock like that, and it had been the time when everything had changed.

He opened the door. Same person, different day. Different life.

"Kate?" _She was Kate now. Not Beckett. She was __**Kate **__to him now, and that made all the difference._

"Castle."

There was a moment of silence.

"I need help. And I'm not fine."

Kate shut the front door and grasped Castle's hand.

It was warm. It was home.

_A/N: This is __**not **__over. Just because Beckett is going to accept help doesn't mean the end of her problems. There are a few lines of storytelling I'd like to explore before I call this done. Admitting you have a problem is only step one. _


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

"Tell me your story." Kate looked up from the fingernails she'd been studying intently. Her therapist, a sharply-dressed woman (Dr. Megan Carr, as she'd introduced herself with a firm handshake), was staring at her.

"What story?" Beckett feigned, casting her eyes to the right ever so slightly. "The story of my life?" She realized she sounded a bit petty, but the truth was, even though she'd consented to seeing a counselor, she wasn't completely enamored with the idea of sharing her life with someone she had just met.

"Well...if you want." Dr. Carr's face softened considerably. "It might be best if I got to know you as a person before we dive into anything sensitive."

"Why would you care?" Kate rolled her eyes, not bothered by the fact that her tone was reminiscent of a pouting toddler.

"If I'm going to help you, I need to learn what you respond to. What your past was like. What your present is. It's the only way you'll be able to make progress in here."

"My partner helped me realize I should get help," Beckett blurted out. Dr. Carr nodded and jotted something down on her clipboard. "He's the best thing about my life right now."

"Is he a work partner or-"

"Work. And life." It was perhaps the best description of their relationship she'd ever thought of.

"Well, I think he cares very deeply for you if he encouraged you to seek help. It says a lot that he didn't sit back and let you work through it alone."

"I care for him too." _Love, Kate. You love him. _

But she didn't want the first person to find this out to be a stranger. She wanted it to be Castle.

"So you are in a healthy relationship. That's good. Is there anything else you want to tell me today?"

"I don't want to talk about what happened." Kate bit her lip, tasting the tiniest drop of blood as it fell into her mouth. "I'm not ready. And I don't know when I will be."

"I don't expect you to be ready. I do know what was in the news and whatnot so your story is not completely unfamiliar to me. But an important step in the recovery process is for you to share...when the time is best for you. When you feel safe."

_What if I never feel safe? _Beckett caught herself wondering. _Tyson and the Master may be dead, but my memories and scars are very much alive. _

Instead, she said, "I hate Christmas."

And that was how she was able to talk about her mother.

Much later, the detective and the writer were able to enjoy a meal together without the awkwardness that had been staunchly present in the days prior to that fateful night when she found the answer at the swings.

"Are you feeling any better today?" Castle asked gently. He'd been attending tedious meetings with his publisher all day and had not been able to go with his partner to the therapist's office. There was a part of him that was not going to allow forgiveness for that neglect, even though Beckett had been more than understanding.

"One appointment isn't going to cure me. You know that, right?" Her hazel eyes pierced right through him. "If I learned anything from the last time I saw someone, it's that this will take a long time." _Maybe forever, _she added to herself.

"No, I know that. Don't ever think I'm rushing you into feeling something you don't. But I mean 'feeling better' in general. You aren't needing as many pain relief pills are you?"

"No, I'm on less medication. It doesn't hurt as much." She didn't specify where she was healing. The truth simply _clung _to her words, making Castle's heart lurch in his chest. For perhaps the millionth time, he wished he could take her pain upon himself, just so she didn't have to suffer.

"Good," he murmured, even though he wanted to vomit. "That's good."

"Did I tell you my therapist was a woman?" Beckett asked suddenly. "Burke was available but...well...because of my situation-" But Castle held up a hand to stop her.

"I understand," he whispered. And then, to his immense surprise, Kate reached up and threaded her fingers within his.

"I know you do," she sighed wearily. "I know." He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back.

But that night, Castle was awoken by screams. He bolted up, searching in his sleep-heavy state for the origin of the abrupt sound. His eyes fell upon his beautiful partner, who was tossing and turning. Even in the dim light, he could tell that she was sweating. Her eyes were closed but she continued to whimper and cry.

"Kate, wake up!" he urged her, touching her shoulder tenderly. That was a mistake. Beckett's screams grew more intense, more frightened. She scratched and clawed at the bed, as though she was fending off an invisible attacker.

_ Tyson. Doran. They may be dead in our waking hours but they live in her dreams._

"Castle, help!" Kate cried out, tears coursing down her face. "Please, Castle, he's hurting me!" He felt his whole body start to shake. _Did she call out for me like this, scared and crying, as he gave her those scars? Had her last thoughts before she lost consciousness in the hole been that I was too late to save her?_

"Shh, Kate, I'm right here," he soothed. "Come on, wake up. I promise you this isn't real, sweetheart, I promise. Just wake up. I'm right here. You're safe now."

"No! Please, stop hurting me!" God, now he was crying too.

"I love you, Kate. You hear me? It's safe here. You're safe and I love you." Kate suddenly stopped screaming. _Did she hear me? _Either way, he felt incredible relief that her suffering was ending. He laid back down in bed. Almost immediately, she curled up next to him and rested her head on his chest.

"Castle," she murmured, voice slick with sleep.

"Yeah," he answered. "I'm here."

And he swore he felt the faintest hint of a smile against his chest.


End file.
